Angel Negro

 

 

 

A young girl is the only witness to her father’s murder, but instead of denouncing the killer she schemes a complicated plot to avenge the crime by herself.

 

Relevant facts.

 

Ángel negro is a co-production Mexico-Colombia-Spain, and was shot in Colombia, on beautiful locations like the coastal city of Santa Martha, the town of Fusagasugá, and a country house in Cundinamarca.

 

Tulio Demicheli, Argentinean filmmaker and screenplay writer, directed Ángel negro. He started his career in his native country, and directed his first film in Mexico in 1954. Most of his movies were made in Argentina and in Mexico, but also directed a few pictures in Spain. 

 

Ángel negro is a movie in which characters are motivated by lower passions: greed, jealousy, and lust. Even the girl that witnesses the killing of this father thinks more of vengeance than anything else. 

 

As many films made in those years, Ángel negro abounds in nudity, as well as in mildly erotic sequences. Rhythm is slow and this contributes to maintain suspense along the film. Cinematography is splendid.

 

Jorge Rivero is the leading man in the movie. During the 1970s, he was one of the biggest movie stars in Mexico. Rivero has taken part in a number of Hollywood films, like Howard Hawk’s Rio Lobo in which he is John Wayne’s co-star.

 

Sandra Mozarowsky is the protagonist: a girl that loves his father above everything and whose world is shaken when he is murdered before her eyes. Sandra was a Moroccan-born actress, raised in Spain –her mother’s country-. She started on her cinematic career as a child, and had already made twenty movies before Ángel negro. Sandra was famous for her “Lolita” roles, and had a promising future in front of her, but died tragically in Madrid after she made this movie. Her apparent suicide led to many rumors.

 

Ángel negro has neither heroes, nor nice characters. It shows the dark side of human nature, but is not sordid. The spectator may well imagine who was the killer all along the film, but cannot ever be sure. Everyone is double-handed in the movie; the girl manages to manipulate her mother’s lover, the man himself, and the family’s secretary to do what she wants them to.

 

In order to do that, the girl pretends she can not identify her father’s killer. She also fakes affection to her mother, whom she actually loathes. The apparently innocent teenager also plays seduction games with her mother’s lover and with the family’s secretary, a bisexual woman.  Her schemes are so well planned that she reaches her goal: the killers punish each other in a way the law would never had been able to.