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.

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.

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.