Orphans and Angels Review:

When mysterious drifter John (Christopher Brown) arrives back in town he bumps into lonely and abused Theresa (Emmeline Hawthorne). The two begin a relationship though Ecstasy induced stupors and plenty of red wine until John’s obsessive personality begins to shine through, not to Theresa but to her friends who begin to find out more about this strangers drug dealing and violent past.

A little New Zealand movie from first time director Harold Brodie, Orphans and Angels explores the thin dark line between love and obsession via the seemingly innocent boy meets girl opening. After two well handled scenes that foreshadow the movies noir roots, John fatally crashes a bachelor party while Theresa’s friend mutilates herself on stage, things get rather normal with the two divulging each others secrets through a night of booze and drugs. Events take a turn for the strange when John begins to control her whole life and like the play Gaslight (made into a movie starring Ingrid Bergman in the 40s) the story becomes about a woman losing her mind thanks to a dominating and malicious man except in this case there’s no buried treasure just raw emotion driving the characters.

While the character driven plot works well, the two leads are both good looking and engaging, it’s a shame that the atmosphere isn’t fully achieved thanks to the shot-on-video look. Sets are colourful, amazingly well lit in pools of light that David Lynch would be proud of but the flat look cannot be avoided and sometimes the movie slips into laziness. The ‘coffee shop’ painfully resembles someone’s front room. Unfortunately this is the bane of the first time director so we must look at the successes and luckily the movie raises itself above the rest by realising its own limits and working within them. Visually the film takes off with it’s dream sequences, putting a dark spin on those from American Beauty by not shying away from the sex and violence that comes with obsessive personalities although while the movie does have its graphic moments, they come across too crisp and clean as video once again drags it down. In the acting stakes Hawthorne excels in the role and really takes the journey from fresh faced young girl to gaunt junkie but Brown does less well. His impressive start is let down by later character revelations that loses his air of danger and his dwindling screen time means a lot is left unexplained.

Throughout the movie the plot is well laid out with the handful of characters slowly dropping the clues so it’s a shame that a heavy handed ending has to join the rather obvious dots. Thankfully, also playing a major role is the evocative soundtrack by Blind Divine that brings you into the movie from the start and helps keep proceedings interesting. Orphans and Angels may show it’s origins a little too much but a dark and involving plot soon makes you forget marking a solid debut from a new director.

Rich Badley

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