Critic Reviews

It’s an excoriating story told with gentle sympathy; a lashing tale about the abuse and marginalisation of women at the hands of a dark establishment in a sun-filled resort.

The moral rot and callous corruption depicted in Angels Wear White has a particularly bracing effect in part because, cultural specifics aside, the inhumanity on display is hardly alien.

The film has an engrossing and powerful drama that is all the more effective for writer/director Vivian Qu’s refusal to keep the story from spinning off into lurid melodrama — all of the story points on display have the harsh bitterness of truth to them.

Angels Wear White brings into relief the bureaucratic corruption and class tension that inform the power dynamics of such situations.

Angels Wear White becomes a bottomless pit of despair consuming complex characters with nowhere to go.

The film looks heavenly, often bathed in light, as if Qu wants nothing more than to assuage these women of their suffering by suggesting paradise. But the brightness is just a veneer. Beneath the surface, “Angels Wear White” is as bleak as they come.

Engaging female dynamics result in strong, convincing performances, especially as their relations eschew platitudes on sisterhood or exploitative images of victimization.

Qu unpacks much that matters in Angels Wear White, including the abuse of power and importance of status and wealth in Chinese society, but her most thoughtful, nuanced observations involve female sexuality.

In its perceptions and mood, Angels Wear White plays like acutely serious female noir.

Qu’s symbolism, including a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe in her provocative Seven-Year-Itch pose presiding over an empty beachfront playground, is big, bold and impressively cinematic, thanks also to cinematographer Benoît Dervaux.