Jane Campion's AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990)
An Angel at My Table can be dubbed as a Biopic since it is about a real person who endured tragedy after tragedy, both in her family and to her mental, spiritual and just overall psychic well-being. But it is not manipulative in the way that Biopics, at least the more modern ones that one comes across (or you can avoid) in recent years, because you can get a real sense that the filmmakers don't want to paint a portrait that lies to the audience or creates some kind of "Narrative" that makes the person at the center some deity or bullshits the way through points in their history - either about their struggles and, importantly, the process of how they can to do what they do. I don't know how true this film is to the life of Janet Frame any more than I can say the books are (haven't read them, though this does make me more curious, incidentally the screenwriter of this film would go on the pen Angela's Ashes, which is just as harrowing if more blunt than this ...
