Imprinting between mother and child is elevated to thematic heights in Safy Nebbou’s L'Empreinte de l'ange (Mark of an Angel). While picking up her son at a birthday party, Elsa (Catherine Frot) finds her entire world turned upside down. Believing Lola, a little girl at the party, to be her daughter, Elsa ends up in a head-to-head confrontation with the girl's mother (Sandrine Bonnaire). Reviewing the film for The Screen Daily, Lisa Nesselson states this psychological duel "packs a punch." Watching these two accomplished actresses square off with maternal fangs bared makes for entertaining if not thoroughly believable melodrama. One key sequence where Lola nearly drowns in the family pool becomes an awkward misfire when revealed as an out-of-nowhere dream sequence. The transference of trustworthiness between the two women becomes the film’s main narrative traction and its resolution is not as surefooted as the closing walk in the park would have us believe.
Sunday’s festival edition of Screen Daily announces that Celluloid Dreams has sold L'Empreinte de l'ange to the UK (Metrodome), Greece (Odeon), Canada (Seville), and Switzerland (Xenix).
Cross-published on Twitch.
