A standout performance from Rapace as a mother looking for her dead daughter lifts a psychological thriller that otherwise strains credulity
Maternal longing is a key theme in director Kim Farrant’s psychological thriller Angel of Mine, which takes what could have been a simple stalker movie premise and fills it out with an intense array of emotions. The film hinges on a head-turning, knife edge performance from Noomi Rapace, whose startled eyes and haunted countenance have an apparitional quality – destined to be burned into the audience’s psyche like a hot iron.
In this Melbourne-set feature, an adaptation of the 2008 French film L’Empreinte de L’Ang, Rapace plays Lizzie, whose young daughter died in a
fire several years ago but who begins to entertain the possibility that she is still alive. Best-known for playing Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, Rapace radiates a sense of dangerous longing that washes over the film, covering it with an icky psychological residue. Her presence seems to inform every aspect of it – from Gabe Noel’s spooky score to Andrew Commis’s chilly cinematography.