Stars: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Iris Churn

Director: Jane Campion

Summary: A drama based on the life of Janet Frame, one of New Zealand's most famous authors.

This sprawling, detailed film by Jane Campion (THE PIANO) tells the true story of Janet Frame, a painfully sensitive girl who managed to escape a dreary rural upbringing and eight years in a mental hospital to become New Zealand's premier poet. The film unfolds as a trilogy, with each section based on a different Frame autobiography. "To the Is-Land" chronicles her childhood and awkward teenage years. "An Angel at My Table" focuses on her time as a teacher and her horrifying mental institution experience. "The Envoy from Mirror City" finds Frame an emerging, critically lauded writer traveling on a grant in Europe and finding love for the first time.
Kerry Fox, as the adult Frame, is astonishing. She transmits painfully self-aware shyness until it rubs off on the viewer. Campion expertly captures the details of Frame's time and place, creating a brutal, impersonal world by turns unremittingly dreary and starkly beautiful. Stunning, exhausting, brilliant, this acclaimed film debuted on New Zealand TV as a miniseries and was later edited for feature-length release internationally.

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Originally produced as a three-part miniseries for New Zealand television, this extraordinary film is based on the life of Janet Frame, an introverted, sensitive girl who was later misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and spent eight years in a psychiatric hospital. She would later become one of New Zealand's most celebrated poets and novelists, publishing her first books while she was still confined to a mental ward. She had endured over 200 electroshock treatments and had almost been lobotomized by careless physicians who took no time to understand that she was merely awkward and shy and suffered from little more than routine depression. From a solid screenplayby Laura Jones, director Jane Campion (The Piano) tells this story without soapy melodrama but rather as anexploration of a challenged creative spirit--a journey into a writer's mind, exploring the power of imagination as a mechanism of survival and self-defense. Three talented actors play Janet Frame at different ages throughout the film, with Kerry Fox giving a powerful performance as the young-adult Janet, whose own skill and creative tenacity would prove to be her salvation. Frightening, harrowing and ultimately a source of humanistic enlightenment, An Angel at My Table(titled after Frame's autobiography) is a film you won't soon forget.--Jeff Shannon

Aspect Ratio:	4:3 Full Frame
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	3 Interviews With Jane Campion, Theatrical Trailer, Filmographies, Janet Frame Biography, Stills Gallery
Year:	1990
Release Date:	November 18, 2002
Runtime:	151 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	A R T 002 D V D
Keywords:	Angel, General, Table, My, Drama
Genre:	Drama