Maternal Instinct: Genre, Grief and Mental Illness in Kim Farrant's 'Angel of Mine'

Kim Farrant's sophomore feature – about a woman who becomes obsessed with a young girl – both rests on and revitalises the tropes of the thriller genre, deploying the requisite twists and toying with the audience sympathies. When it comes to its treatment of loss, mourning and psychological instability, however, the film proves more crude, riddling its narrative with thematic inconsistencies, writes Dave Crewe.

Additional keywords:
Noomi Rapace, Richard Roxburgh, L'empreinte de l'ange, grief, mental illness, parenthood, adoption