In a bar, Sharon laughs while chaining shooters. Next to her, her friend Rose forces a smile, looking both tired and embarrassed: the latter knows what is coming, having often seen the former slip up. In fact, Sharon lost contact with her only son because she failed to admit his alcoholism. But now, through an article recounting the struggle of a penniless widower to pay for the care of his sick daughter, Sharon glimpses a possible redemption. Landing in this suffering family like a well-intentioned tornado, Sharon will change the lives of these strangers, as well as her own. Based on a true story, Ordinary Angels stars a very fit Hilary Swank.
Fortunately, because this inspiring, but very fictionalized, story has a heavy hand on the melodic side (the music which highlights each emotion does not help). But it is precisely in these strong moments that Hilary Swank’s warm and above all very accurate composition keeps the film anchored in sincerity.
The two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress, for Boys Don’t Cry (Boys don’t cry) And Million Dollar Baby (The million dollar girl), devours this larger-than-life role, a sort of Erin Brockovich hairdresser version. The screenplay by Kelly Fremon Craig and Meg Tilly Kelly also gives him a plethora of tasty lines to sink his teeth into.
About the co-writers, we owe the recent adaptation to Kelly Fremon Craig Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (God, are you there? It’s me Margaret). As for Meg Tilly, best known as a novelist these years, she was for a long time an eminently appreciated actress. Her photo in aerobics outfit in The Big Chill (The big thrill), by Lawrence Kasdan, is one of the most emblematic of American cinema of the 1980s. In 1985, his composition of young novice infanticide in Agnes of God (Agnes of God), by the late Norman Jewison, earned him an Oscar nomination.
In short, interesting road map, screenwriting department.
Clumsy symbolism
For his part, Jon Gunn’s production is functional, but too focused on clumsy symbolism. For the record, Gunn has directed several films with a Christian spiritual vocation financed, like this one, by the Kingdom Story Company.
In this regard, the religious message is often not very subtly explained in the dialogue, with evangelization almost taking precedence over the narration. Here again, Hilary Swank saves the day, like her character in the film.