Chances are if you saw Mitchell Lichtenstein's debut feature, Teeth, some eight years ago you haven't forgotten it. The film centered on a young girl with an affliction called vagina dentata, basically a set of teeth where no woman would want them. It was a pretty weird flick, but Lichenstein is back now with Angelica, which will again use sexual abnormality as the basis for an original horror.
Starring Jena Malone, the Victorian-era film centers on a young London woman who is forced to practice abstinence after the birth of her daughter. While her husband (Ed Stoppard) still wishes to have sex, she keeps her sexual urges repressed until some kind of evil apparition appears takes shape. Here's the official synopsis:
London in 1880, in the middle of the Victorian era. Shop assistant Constance, who lost her parents at an early age, falls in love with doctor and vivisectionist Dr Joseph Barton. When their daughter Angelica is born the pair is overjoyed, but the birth almost costs the young mother her life. From now on she must practice sexual abstinence – she is to think of herself as a beautiful garden enclosed by a tall iron fence. Before long her bid to suppress her desires and erotic feelings gives birth to demons. A ghostly being emerges from Constance’s hysterical fantasy; the spirit penetrates closed doors, terrorising the sleeping child and her fragile mother. When an assistant with parapsychological skills is called to their home, their middle-class world finally falls apart …
A wickedly ironic portrait of a society in a blend of psychodrama and horror; a film in which dark interiors reflect the mental states of the protagonists, and supernatural secrets are celebrated from different points of view. Director Lichtenstein’s ambiguous game of insecurities is based on a novel by Arthur Phillips.
Also starring Janet McTeer, Angelica will debut at the Berlin Film Festival this weekend.
Angelica by Teaser-Trailer.com
