Review: Abandoned: Angelique’s Isle

STUDIO: Indican Pictures | DIRECTOR: Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Michelle Derosier | CAST: Charlie Carrick, Julia Jones, Stephen McHattie, Aden Young
RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021 | PRICE: DVD $9.96
SPECS: NR | 90 min. | Thriller | stereo

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie  1/2

Abandoned: Angelique’s Isle is the harrowing true story of perseverance and survival amidst the Canadian wilderness of 1845.

Despite the warnings from her shaman grandmother, Angelique Mott (Julia Jones, TV’s Westworld), a young Anishinaabe woman, joins her new husband Charlie (Charlie Carrick, TV’s The Borgias) on a journey to search for cooper along the shores of Lake Superior on the behest of the corrupt American prospector Cyrus Mendenhall (Aden Young TV’s Rectify). After they discover a cooper boulder too large for the team to handle, Cyrus convinces them to stay on the island to guard it while he gathers reinforcements. They soon find themselves abandoned and as the months pass and winter comes, they are faced with increasing cold and a dwindling food supply. After Charlie succumbs to the perilous conditions, Angelique is left alone and realizes that perhaps it is her rich indigenous roots that will be the source of her salvation.

The majority of Abandoned: Angelique’s Isle is told visually and the female crew led by directors Marie-Hélène Cousineau (Restless River) and Michelle Derosier (Fire Song) are up to the task. Shot on location in Northern Ontario, the director’s pictorial style and attention to detail transforms the setting from mere background to being an integral character in the story. Cinematographer Celiana Cárdenas (The Cuban) masterfully captures the breathtaking beauty of the warm summer beaches, as well as the cold and unforgiving harshness of winter’s barren landscape in all of its natural light. Derosier also penned the screen adaption, from James R. Stevens 2010 novella Angelique Abandoned, and uses the couple’s fight for survival as a way to explore such wide-ranging themes as greed, acculturation and personal acceptance. As Angelique, Julia Jones is extraordinary, carrying much of the film alone and in silence, convincingly conveying the heartache and subsequent determination Angelique is experiencing.

The film certainly does her justice to the story of Angelique Mott, one of many indigenous stories that many probably have never heard and need to be told.