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ANGEL EYES
By Debra Montague

GENRE: Film-noir
LOGLINE:

A closeted lesbian bookkeeper for a private investigator, falls for the woman she is assigned to investigate which causes her carefully constructed life to collapse.

SYNOPSIS:

It's 1952. Muriel Harper (43), exists. That’s it. She’s the bookkeeper for Miller and Johnson Private Investigators. She’s been there a number of years; doing her job; keeping the lights on. It’s all she wants to do.

One of the current cases involves the secretary of a local transportation company; Lara Baker (40). She may be a Communist. Items this company itransports to our fine troops fighting Communism in Korea are winding up on the black market. Lara signs off on everything. She’d know what was being shipped.

Archie Miller, a co-owner, has gotten nowhere in getting to know Lara. Muriel suggests instead of seeing Lara as a conquest; see her as a friend. “Fine. You be her friend,” Archie says and Muriel finds herself stumbling through the motions of private investigation. She is drawn to Lara by her eyes; Angel Eyes, Muriel calls them.

Muriel’s best friend, Dean (38), the openly gay neighbor living below her, assists. Muriel mother hens him; scared that his lifestyle will endanger himself and, by extension, her. Dean believes he is safe. He works in a menswear shop and provides all sorts of "services" to the men who frequent the store.

Muriel falls for Lara. How could those Angel Eyes be Communist? Muriel decides to prove Lara is being framed, even though that’s not what they were hired to prove. She will do what she can to keep this woman safe but that is challenged by an enforcer for the owner of the transportation company. He steps out of his role and threatens to expose Muriel. Dean takes it upon himself to kill the guy; a skill Muriel didn’t know Dean had. Now, she has to live with the idea her best friend killed a man; even in her defense.

As she falls deeper into detecting, the fear of being discovered grows. She’s lived her life in two steamer trunks; ready to move when the gossip got too much. If she proves Lara is being framed, maybe she can stop running? In a twist of fate Muriel never sees coming, Dean is killed and it looks like Lara ordered it. Muriel’s terror is back. She loses her friend. She loses her job and with it, her apartment. And, she loses a love which she suspects might have been simply a means to an end. Her whole life crashes down. It’s time to flee again.

Or is it? At the end of the movie, Muriel comes face-to-face with the answers to her unspoken questions. What do you do when the gossip catches up? Where do you go when it all crashes down? And who is Lara Baker, the woman with the Angel Eyes?

ANGEL EYES

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