Angel de Fuego

Thirteen-year-old Alma (Evangelina Sosa) is the titular “angel of fire” who works as a trapeze artist and fire breather for a shabby circus on the edge of Mexico City. Much to the dismay of some of her fellow circus performers, Alma has been canoodling with her ailing father, a situation that results in pregnancy, after which Alma is told that her child will be a monster, and she's banished from the circus. After wandering the streets, she eventually hooks up with a band of traveling puppeteers headed by a female religious wacko who puts Alma as well as her own teenaged son through some sadistic purification rites as a means of redemption. Given its potentially incendiary theme involving incest and torturous salvation, Angel de Fuego curiously rises above melodrama thanks to an almost divine restraint on the part of director Dana Rotberg. Attractively shot and well-acted, this 1992 film sports a nearly pristine DVD transfer on an otherwise extra-less disc, and is recommended for larger foreign collections. (T. Rich)