Sweet Angel Mine (1996)
Paul, a young man from London, arrives in the small Nova Scotia town of Milestone, where his long lost father was last seen years earlier. Paul is eager to find out what brought his father to this remote community. He meets Rauchine, a young, beautiful and unaffected girl who lives with her unstable mother and domineering grandmother on a nearby island, who is eking out a harsh and isolated living. Paul finds himself enmeshed in a web of jealousy, bitterness and fear as his attraction to Rauchine begins to grow. After a failed attempt to leave the island with Paul, Rauchine must make a crucial decision and break the cycle of violence and death that has marked her life.
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Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
I caught this film about 30 mins into it. I have to say it captured me right away and I couldn't stop watching. I disagree with some of the comments of people who say it had no plot, clearly they were not watching the film!!! To be honest it had a very disturbing storyline that somehow managed to draw you into the film in a rather uncomfortable way. I would go as far to say as you may have felt unpleasant whilst watching the film due to its disturbing screenplay. Whilst never feeling actually scared it seemed all too believable for me and made me feel somewhat uncomfortable and unsafe, a feeling I do not feel happy with. If the intent of this film was to disturb it did so well and this is a credit to the acting skills of all involved, who made this film seem like sick a documentary rather than a film.I would not recommend seeing this film as it is rather disturbing and all too real, however I must commend it as a milestone in cinematography.
Paul is a Londoner in Canada, looking for his Dad (I saw it from about 1/2 hour in). He meets Roisin ("Rasheen" as she's called in the credits), a girl with an extremely unfriendly, possessive mother. Lurking in the background is Roisin's even more evil grandmother.What develops is a solid mystery as to this house of women, Paul becoming increasingly hostile and frightened of the mother Megan, and him wanting to help Roisin get away and see what life has to offer.It's all explained quite neatly by the end, helped along by decent acting, a fairly good script, and some really quite horrifying moments. Definite shades of Psycho in this.
How do I love this movie? Let me count the ways. OK. I'm done counting. I can count the ways I love this movie on fewer than the fingers of one hand. In fact, I wouldn't even need one finger. Not unless I was using my middle finger.This is the type of movie where you root for the young lover-wannabes to NOT get together at the end. This is the type of movie where you root for the entire cast of characters to die in the end. And speaking of root, this is the type of movie that gives undergoing a root canal a good name. That's what I wish I'd been doing instead of watching this movie---undergoing a root canal.One really has to wonder how this film got by the Canadian Board of Tourism. Not to mention the Province of Nova Scotia's Chamber of Commerce. That's where it takes place. ("Come visit beautiful Nova Scotia. You, too, can act like an idiot!") The plot? Why bother? When every character in a movie can't get a clue, ESPECIALLY the two young lovers, then any alleged plot becomes meaningless. The best ending for this movie would have been for all of its characters, in one mass group-in, to have thrown themselves into the Atlantic Ocean from atop the rocky Nova Scotian cliffs. And to have taken the director (Curtis Radclyffe) with them! That, finally, would have been the first thing about this movie to make any sense."Sweet Angel Mine." Never judge a movie by its title. I did. And because I did, I wasted nearly two hours of my lifetime. That's two lost hours that can never be reclaimed. A root canal, at least, when it's all over, turns out to have been worthwhile time well spent.
I caught this film at the Welsh International Film festival a couple of years ago, and it stood out (decapitated) head and shoulders above anything else. It's a superbly-crafted thriller about a man searching for his missing father, and finding a hell of a lot more in the shape of an isolated matriarchal family in Nova Scotia. The script, acting, use of locations, and most of all the superb atmosphere combine to make this one of the best films I've ever seen. It's a real pity it's not well known, as it certainly beats most of Hollywood's output hands down.