Angel of Fire

The folkloric, the fantastic and the fatalistic memorably combine in director Dana Rotberg’s award-winning second feature, a surrealist circus drama which opened the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 1992. “Angel of Fire is a rare and intense cinematic allegory in its magic-realist treatment of themes such as incest, religious fanaticism and marginality. . . The film focuses on Alma [played by Evangelina Sosa], a young trapeze artist and fire-eater in a dingy circus peopled by outcasts. Abandoned by her mother, Alma becomes the lover of her ailing clown-father and is expecting his child. Upon his death, she is forced to leave the circus for refusing to give up the baby. Wandering the streets, she eventually joins up with an itinerant marionette theatre which preaches Old Testament tales, run by Refugio [Lilia Aragón] and her submissive son, Sacramento [Roberto Sosa, Evangelina’s brother]. Alma willingly undergoes a rigorous purification ritual prescribed by the stern Refugio, hoping to find in her suffering a promise of love and hope for her unborn child” (Vancouver I.F.F.). Colour, 35mm, in Spanish with English subtitles. 95 mins.