There’s some soap-operatic gusto to this story of two teenage gay women in a Jehovah’s Witness community in Quebec; it’s got something of Jeanette Winterson’s tenderness, if not exactly the wit, and the movie is interesting and even faintly subversive in its implied analogies concerning conversion and enclosed behaviour systems.
Anwen O’Driscoll brings some Anna Kendrick energy to the role of Jaime, a smart teen whose mum suffers a breakdown after the death of her dad from a heart attack. She has been sent away to live with her aunt Beth (Liane Balaban), who with her husband Jean-François (Antoine Yared), is a devout Jehovah’s Witness and expects Jaime to obey their rules and show up to their religious services wearing the very uncool Handmaid’s-Tale dress they’ve picked out for her. Gloweringly, Jaime complies but is struck as by a lightning-bolt at the sight of beautiful Marike (June Laporte) in the congregation; she lives with her older sister Amanda (Deragh Campbell) and Amanda’s alpha-male husband Frank (Tim Campbell), fierce JW folk, all.
