ANGEL BABY (1997)

The moment that Kate (Jacqueline McKenzie) and Harry (John Lynch) compare suicide scars on their wrists, you know that they're meant for each other. The two meet at a psychiatric outpatient facility. She's a schizophrenic waif, with chalk white skin, raccoon eyes, and a defiant belief that she's receiving messages from Wheel of Fortune. He's a recovering nervous-breakdown victim, haunted but not so visibly disturbed. Michael Rymer's offbeat Australian love story sees the fragile comedy in a relationship where the lovers have to share space with an invisible third party -- the muse of madness. McKenzie, the striking young actress from 1993's Romper Stomper, evokes the egocentric magnetism and scary, feral disconnectedness of a delusional schizophrenic. As for Lynch, a little of his morose-puppy stare goes a long way. Around the midway point, Kate gets pregnant, stops taking her medication, and collapses into hysterical paranoia, a development that might have proved more compelling had the film itself not descended into ''harrowing'' our-crazy-love-versus-the-world cliches.

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