L'empreinte de l'ange (2008) watch online HD

I often tell people that if they want to see a film – avoid the trailer. In the case of 'Mark of an Angel' I'd tell them to avoid the poster. While so many trailers these days seem to be potted synopses of the whole film ('Public Enemies' being a massive case in point) the tag-line of this film may give a way a crucial plot element of the story. Which would be a pity as this is a really first-class film. Class being the operative word given the acting talent on show here.

Sandrine Bonnaire can do no wrong (unless it's required of her) and Catherine Frot has long since masked the art of barely suppressed tension and panic. Here she really brings it to the fore as she stars as Elsa, a woman with a long history of depression who develops a fascination with a seven year old girl she sees at a birthday party when she comes to collect her son. Determined to find out more about the girl she uses her son as a way in to the family ensuring that he befriends the girl's brother so that she can then befriend the girl's mother Claire (Bonnaire). She uses her son more and more in her pursuit of this obsession telling her employees that he is seriously ill so that she can run off and resume her stalking. She tells her parents she is dating so that they will baby-sit and she can do the same thing. At first Claire doesn't suspect anything but gradually notices that Elsa is paying too much attention to Lola – the girl in question. Meanwhile we are starting to realise why. Throughout the film you are not so much on the edge of your seat as pressed back into it. The tension as you wait desperately for Elsa to be found out is excruciating and when one particularly dramatic scene ends with what would normally be seen as the cop-out of Elsa suddenly waking up – you are just hugely relieved – they haven't caught her yet. And that's the thing – your sympathy is completely with Elsa, you cringe as she keeps accidentally turning up at every event involving Lola and her mother and you shudder as you watch this woman falling slowly apart. Frot really lays it on in this but Sandrine Bonnaire certainly holds her own when it comes her turn to convey the creeping (and increasing ) fear of this woman that is taking hold of her. There is one scene which is pure Hitchcock and clearly meant to be. Lola is performing in a ballet watched by her parents and brother in the audience. Claire notices her looking offstage to the wings a lot and when she turns herself she catches a glimpse of someone there. Is it Elsa? She can't be sure and she keeps straining between dancers to see but only gets the briefest of fleeting glances. It's an incredibly tense sequence of "Is it her?"/ "Is it not her?" made all the more so by the fact that we know – it is. Add to that the fact that the ballet the girls are dancing to is a musical simulation of a clock – ("Tick Tock" "Tick Tock") - and you're now pressed back into the seat behind you. This really is great stuff.

This is a movie best enjoyed if you know nothing about it except that it is a fun thriller, so I wouldn't advise reading any reviews before seeing it.

At the heart of the film is the premise that there's a special connection between a mother and her child that cannot be denied.

The movie is very good at hiding where it's going. At first, you're not sure if you're watching something seamy, then you fear it may be about violence done to a child and finally it's fun to find out where it actually is going. You're not even sure if you're watching a thriller or a drama. It's keeps you on the edge

Catherine Frot is perfect as a woman who lost her newborn baby years ago in a hospital fire and thinks she's found her living with another family. You sympathize with her despite the fact that she may be insane or at least nearing a breakdown and even while you don't know whether her intentions are good or evil.

I only have once concern about the movie, and that's the ending. So please don't read this if you haven't seen the movie as I'm about to give the ending away!!!

First, I can't believe that finding out one's mother is not one's mother could be as easy on a child as depicted here. This part was done too cavalier and was simply not believable. However, what bothered me more was the very last scene. Forget the practical, legality of the situation depicted in this movie, a child's parents are the parents that raised her in a loving caring way. To see this woman, who had no relationship with the child during her entire life, who may still be in a dubious mental state, then walking alone with her at the end of the film was to say the least creepy. Either this was intended by the makers of the film to have a creepy ending, or it showed some lack of concern for children.

Regardless of the ending, this is great fun.

I thought this was a great film, totally compelling, with fine acting. In answer to the implausibility of the plot (based on true events) I would say that a mother can have a sixth sense about her offspring. Some people are much more visually aware than others and I think it's therefore possible to have an idea of what someone would look like years later. Besides there may well be photographs and memories of what close relatives looked like at a similar age which would heighten that sense of recognition. As for Sandrine Bonnaire not recognising Catherine Frot as the woman she presumed dead lying on the floor of the hospital, we don't know if they had much, if anything, to do with each other in the hospital and, panic-stricken as she was after realising that her own child had perished and in the midst of an inferno, it's perfectly plausible that she did not remember her. This is a film which will stay with me for some time and I'd thoroughly recommend it.

Elsa, a woman grieving for her dead daughter, knows what it must feel when she suddenly realizes she might be living a lie. For all practical purposes, Lucy, her infant daughter, has been dead, and buried. Elsa's estranged husband wants to put the matter to rest and so are her parents. Now living alone with Thomas, her son, she suddenly becomes aware that his school mate, Jeremy, holds the key to solve her great pain in mourning for Lucy.

We are asked to follow Elsa, as she tails Claire, the mother of Jeremy, who also has a young daughter, Lola, in whom she discovers a great resemblance of her beloved Lucy. Elsa must gain entrance to Claire's home, which is being sold as the family is moving to Montreal. Elsa appears to be a loose canon in the way she acts, getting as close to the little girl, as she can.

The film, directed by Safy Nebbou, which she co-wrote with Cyril Gomez-Mathieu, asks the viewer to look at what it is being shown from the perspective of what appears to be a deranged woman who cannot find solace in the great loss she experienced. That is why, when the action turns in an unexpected and surprising way, we are completely taken aback because in our minds we have been led to view the situation from Claire's side.

Catherine Frot keeps amazing with each new appearance. Her Elsa shows a woman at an almost breaking point. Ms. Frot is a welcome presence in anything she plays. In the film she is equally matched by one of the most interesting actresses from France, Sandrine Bonnaire. To her credit, Ms. Bonnaire brings an intensity to all her roles, something that she builds in a performance that is nuanced without gimmick. Wladimir Yordanoff plays Claire's husband. The great Michel Aumont is seen as Elsa's father.

This is the first film by M. Nebbou, who according to the IDMb credits has worked in shorts before. The director shows talent and good instincts in the way he gets the audience involved in a film that was based on a real story.

It seems that this story is based on actual events.

Well, see for yourself...

The yarn about a woman in her late thirties - Catherine Frot - who lives with her son and her next to be ex husband...During the birthday party of her son's school mate, with of course many children there, she notices the presence of a little seven old girl. And she decides to follow her, discover where she comes from...

During the first part of the movie, she approaches the girl's mother - Sandrine Bonnaire, and her behavior seems to be more and more weird about it. You, in the audience, wonder why all this...

Only near the ending - BEWARE, SPOILER !!! - you discover that the little girl is Catherine Frot's lost child, in a burning, when she was still a three days old baby!!!

Of course, there is a hard struggle between the two women. Frot accuses Bonnaire to have stolen her daughter during the fire, seven years earlier.

THE thing that you, spectator, wonder is :

HOW THE HELL DID SHE DO TO RECOGNIZE HER LITTLE GIRL SEVEN YEARS AFTER SHE WAS ONLY A SEVERAL DAYS BABY ?!!!

It's so big, so large, that you could easily let a truck pass through.

But the acting of the two women is absolutely outstanding. It's worth seeing it for that reason.

It's rare that you go into a movie aware of a sort-of familiar story (and this one, though true, is up with the Top 10 Lifetime plots), and a sort-of familiar genre and come out of the theater dazed at the uniquely transfixing experience you just had. Angel of Mine is one of those experiences.

I really admired the way this film takes you down certain familiar paths (is it going to be a tearjerker like "The Notebook", a psycho-stalker like "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle") and then detours you completely. No, Angel of Mine is not in the same kind of "anything for a cheap rise" league.

Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnair are always stunning but they work a kind of intuitive magic here. Indeed, the most electrifying moments between the two occur when they're being silent together.

The photography is elegiac, the score poignant, the direction lucid and transparent.

Get it out on Region 1 DVD folks....more people need to see this!

This film has been released in Britain under the title ANGEL OF MINE, although the American title is a direct translation of its original French title which is L'EMPREINTE DE LA ANGE. The 'angel' referred to is a little girl named Lola. This is a very, very strange story, and an extremely harrowing one. The two lead actresses, Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnaire, take emotions to the limit and then beyond. What pros they are! Frot has made 88 films and Bonnaire has made 51, including the amazing VAGABOND (1985) of Agnès Varda, where she showed at an early age just how far she could go in playing someone over the edge of human desperation. In this film, the two women are driven far, far over that edge. The scene where they physically fight and try to tear each other apart like demented harpies is deeply shocking, as women rarely are driven to such extremes of clawing, smashing, desperate combat. The director and co-writer of this film is Safy Debbou. Unfortunately, this very shy creature, which we may call The Safy, must be considered of indeterminate sex, as there is no hint as to whether it is male or female, due to the lack of information about it on IMDb. I am inclined to suspect that it may be female, but zoological confirmation of the sex of The Safy is so far lacking. Another thing which is lacking on IMDb is the listing of the title ANGEL OF MINE, so that British cinema-lovers looking up this film will not be able to find it listed at all. I certainly hope that deficiency may be remedied. Is this a conspiracy to keep everyone in the dark? Only joking. But there ought to be a warning on the front of the DVD: 'Unsuitable viewing for the emotionally vulnerable.' There is no blood, no gore, no one gets killed, we don't have to look at corpses and wounds, but we do have something which is almost worse: raw emotional frenzy. There is little one dare say about the film's plot without revealing too much. Catherine Frot had a daughter who died in a hospital fire, and she has been distraught and depressed for years because of this. It has led to the breakup of her marriage, despite the fact that she still has a son. Through the young son, she meets a friend of the son's friend, and thus encounters Sandrine Bonnaire and her daughter Lola. Frot becomes a stalker of the daughter, with whom she is obsessed. I should stress that this film claims to be 'based on true events'. The real story becomes something other than what one expects. After all, there have been far too many films about stalkers. This is not really a stalker film at all, it just seems that way in the beginning. Watch, but beware.

This has several things in common with Ruiz' Comedy de l'Innocence: in both a mother has lost a young child several years before the start of the film, in both the mother forms an attachment to a child with parents of its own and in both there are implausibilities which are, to some extent, compensated for by outstanding acting. As the two previous posters have already revealed the plot I need only reiterate the SPOILER warning before discussing the flaws. We meet Catherine Frot in the midst of a divorce and sharing custody of her son, Thomas, with her estranged husband. At a children's party she appears drawn to a girl of perhaps seven or eight and determines to find out all she can about her. Turns out that Lola is the daughter of Sandrine Bonnaire and has a brother, Jeremie, the same age as Thomas who Frot uses as a lever to insinuate herself into the Bonnaire household. After an early meeting Bonnaire remarks to her husband what a nice woman Frot is. Frot becomes convinced that Lola is the daughter who burned to death in a hospital fire seven years ago and confides as much in her parents. She confronts Bonnaire and offers to pay for a DNA test. Bonnaire naturally thinks she is crazy but when Bonnaire's husband says a DNA test will clearly resolve the matter Bonnaire admits to Frot that Lola is indeed her child. Bonnaire was at the hospital, saw Frot out cold and assumed she was dead. She then exchanged her own dead infant with Frot's. Flaw #1. How could Frot detect that a seven year old girl was the child she last saw at FIVE DAYS OLD. How come Bonnaire NEVER RECOGNISED Frot when she later admits thinking she saw her dead. Apart from this Frot is outstanding and Bonnaire only a whisker behind.

This is a film where it really is best to know nothing about it beforehand. Don't watch the trailer. Don't read any reviews. (Don't even read this review!)

Elsa is going through a sticky divorce. Works as an assistant in a pharmacy. Appears rational, has poise, is a seemingly normal – if depressive – middle-aged suburban mother.

But then she spots little girl Lola at a birthday party. Can't take her eyes off her. Has to know about her. Has to get near her somehow. She's obsessed with the girl. As if she's seen a ghost.

Is this girl Elsa's dead daughter Lucie reincarnated? (I'm wondering) Hope not. Don't want this film to turn into a supernatural freak out.

Is little Lola gonna get pinched? Or her mother bumped off? Hope not. Don't want everything going bananas into psycho slasher melodrama either – Elsa going all crazy bonkers. Keep this restrained Mr Nebou (director), keep it all contained within the realms of plausibility.

He does. Even though there's a scene where the 2 nice mothers have a bit of a ding dong (its a good fight too. By "good" i mean some serious hair pulling going on) No knifes come out though.

The film sustains suspense throughout, engrossing you (me) with a thrillerish edge of tense dread right to the end.

Turns out to be based on a true story. Really? Yep, it can/does happen. This film convinced me.

Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnaire are two of the finest French actresses of their respective generations (as a - necessary - sidenote: Frot is in GREAT shape for a woman in her 50s!), and their duel here (literally, in one scene: there is a short fight scene between them) is something worth catching. The film begins with a strong sense of mystery, as the viewer tries to understand the reason behind Frot's obsession with Bonnaire's daughter, but when that reason is revealed, the picture stalls, and the main twist is telegraphed at least 10 minutes before it occurs. It's an elegant and sophisticated film, more of a drama than the thriller its trailer tries to present it as, but too slow for either genre. **1/2 out of 4.

a girl. two women. a past episode. a recollection. and the truth. nothing else. a sensitive story about feelings, past and accident. and a beautiful cast.nothing else. the tale is not new. but it is delicate and profound. the steps of search of truth is a precise work. and the final answer is like rain drops - clear, honest, dramatic. so, out of performance is the science to present a form of pain with many faces. and the beauty of a verdict. the fall of masks. the power of words. the force of gestures. the life as hided flower of choices and needs. a film like a moral lesson or like morning wind. because its object is silence as cloth of cry.or only walk of a mother and her daughter.