​Oates explores life in the northern town in “Sweet Angel Baby”

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Filmmaker Melanie Oates follows 2019 feature debut “Body and Bones” with another thoughtful and well-observed drama in which the challenges and limitations of the small town put pressure on a young woman yearning for something greater than provincial dead-ends. In “Sweet Angel Baby,” which premiered last year in the Toronto Film Festival’s Centerpiece program, Eliza (Michaela Kurimsky) hides two significant secrets from the close-knit community members she sees every day at the diner where she works and the church where she worships. One is her artistic outlet: a social media account to which Eliza posts artful, erotic, and anonymous self-portraits posed frequently in outdoor spaces. The second is her queerness: Eliza is privately entangled with co-worker Toni (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), an outsider tolerated but not wholly welcomed by the townsfolk.

Oates has in Kurimsky a superior collaborator. The director-actor dynamic might remind some viewers of the almost telepathic relationship shared by Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams (whose blend of emotional vulnerability and flinty self-possession Kurimsky often evokes), even if “Sweet Angel Baby” isn’t as sophisticated as any of the four movies Reichardt has made with her favorite performer. A cursory glance at the “Sweet Angel Baby” trailer points in the direction of the central conflict: the fallout once family, friends and neighbors discover one or both of Eliza’s private activities. The contemporary take on “The Scarlet Letter” could be the movie’s strongest asset and weakest link, as Oates aims to thread a needle in which her protagonist reckons with negative narrow-mindedness on the path to self-acceptance.

Oates makes a very good choice by writing Eliza as a “woman who takes matters into her own hands” (a description/compliment voiced by one of the residents). Eliza has carved out a position of respect in this coastal Newfoundland fishing hamlet; it comes as no surprise that she is the one to organize and lead the effort to raise the money it will take to save the chapel. But it is Eliza’s double, or perhaps triple, life that keeps us invested. Along the way, Kurimsky manages to convince us that Eliza’s ill-advised reciprocation of romantic overtures made by the married-with-children Shawn (Peter Mooney) can be attributed to frustration and curiosity, even if viewers scream for her to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

Sometimes, “Sweet Angel Baby” can feel too simple and too obvious, especially in the post-exposure wrath of certain antagonistic villagers at the ready with metaphorical pitchforks. A number of critics have also made compelling arguments that Toni deserved more attention and deeper exploration of her mostly unexamined interiority. Why does she put up with the ostracism and collective cold-shoulder given to her by the rude and homophobic customers? Fortunately, Tailfeathers and Kurimsky have the chops and the chemistry to overcome the melodramatic predictability of several quarrels.

Oates depicts Eliza’s ongoing self-portrait project as an outlet, working hard to imply all the ways that it might represent enough personal liberation to counter the stifling attitudes holding her back from revealing her most authentic outwardly-presented self. Through the variety of fantasies Eliza conjures, the filmmaker hints fleetingly at a kinkier world than Eliza’s mundane realities can offer. Assuredly, the viewer is meant to champion and cheer for the protagonist’s hard-fought triumphs in much the same way that Hawthorne convincingly argued on behalf of Hester Prynne’s inherent goodness.