I liked the premise of this film but I feel that Angela Shelton the film maker was a bit too self redundant and self indulgent when it came to the underlying issues of why she made this movie in the first place. I felt that the other Angela Shelton's were most precious and very vulnerable.
One would have to ask some very hard questions about her mothers role in letting her daughter move to her fathers house because the child said she wanted too because "he lets me drink Kool-Aid". Bizarre if you ask me. Ms Shelton never addresses this problem. And if that is unanswered when in fact as she touts that this film is a film of healing, then victims need to know the truth about why a child could be placed in someone's care beyond the lame excuse such as her mother gives her about her role in allowing her child to live and drink Kool-Aid with daddy at the age of 5.
As far as I am concerned, Angela never resolves the most important part of her abuse...the secret role of her mother. Many things in this movie are disturbing and go unanswered. I think its way to painful for Angela to go there.
I can say that as an abuse victim myself, I learned again about what not to do in regards to my abuser as I watched this film. I do not like the concept of forgiveness and its religious overtones. There is a certain obligation that comes with forgiveness that smacks of a desire to please god
(You must forgive) and a willingness to sacrifice yourself once again to one of the belief systems that agitates the very problem of sexual exploitation in the first place namely repression. Specifically religious repression.
As Alice Miller says in her books, " You truly cannot forgive unless the one that abused you sincerely asks for it by admitting their abuse of power and your trust." But even then Ms Miller never advocates Forgiveness even though many would say the hate will eat you up. But I say you need to hate your perpetrator all the way thru and fully allow yourself to hate holding nothing back then something incredible happens. The facts act if one allows themselves to see things as they actually are. But if you have a belief intact that keeps the truth protected then the cycle continues just in other obscure forms.
The painful thing is that Angela really wants her reality verified so she seeks it from her obvious perpetrator
her father. But he is just the ugly end result of a deeper problem ...her mother. As long as Angela lets her mother keep the lie sacred (and enables her mother to do so) about abandoning her to a child rapist then she will never be satisfied about the truth of her father even if he did say he was a pedophile molested her and took pictures of her naked etc.(see the movie for explanation) I think its interesting that at least on an unconscious level Angela does implicate her mother as a source problem but most that have viewed this film get taken away by the scene with the father and the mothers role is the upstaged and obscured.
I cannot recommend this film on the merits it advertises itself to be. I can say it is good to watch if you wish to see the inner workings of someone that refuses to go all the way and face the deepest part of their abuse issue. From my perspective little Angela Shelton's case was flat out abandonment by her mother and that in fact left her and her sister with a perverted monster...their father. I mean why did her mother divorce the idiot in the first place? Her brother carries so much inner shame about being his father's unwilling accomplice
its heart wrenching. But he smiles thru an interview his sister has with him in which she and the brother seem to patch things up yet the pain hangs in the air just this time with forced smiles.
This is an amazing study of denial about the very subject in which one is seemingly trying to resolve. But in the end it seems Angela finally get the desired attention a middle child such as Angela craves. She finds only part of her voice the rest is still choked down by an false idea of her mother. Sadly it looks like it works at the expense of some very lovely women who just happen to be named Angela Shelton.
