The Doctor’s Diagnosis: F
I’m giving this movie an F, but it’s a special kind of F. Sometimes, a film comes along that provides a completely new experience for me and makes me reconsider the depths of human insanity. This is one such film. Redeeming Love is absolutely fucking bonkers. I’ve never seen a Christian film before (this one being a special gift from the movie scheduling gods), and I’ve apparently really been missing out because this is one of the most depraved movies that I’ve seen in a while. According to the promotional website, Redeeming Love is a “life- changing story of the power of unconditional and all-consuming love.” It also contains rape, murder, incest, suicide, pedophilia and forced abortion, making this perhaps the most fucked-up PG-13 movie I’ve ever seen. Apparently, if you claim to have a religious message, your film can read like a laundry list of porn categories that are only available on the dark web. If it sounds like I’m just being a prude, don’t worry. The movie is also a poorly-made piece of shit. I should mention that I am going to describe the plot in far greater detail than usual because that’s essential to convey the sheer insanity of this film.
Angel (played by Abigail Cowen) is the product of an adulterous affair between her married father and her unmarried mother. When her father stops supporting them, her mother becomes a prostitute in order to provide for them, but she then dies and her pimp sells 8-year-old Angel into prostitution. Did I mention that this movie is a “life- changing story of the power of unconditional and all-consuming love”? So, anyway, the 8-year-old becomes a star prostitute and rises in the ranks (do prostitutes have ranks?) until a special day years later when her father pays her for sex without realizing who she is. She knows who he is, though, and fucks him out of spite before revealing her identity, causing him to shoot himself out of guilt. It’s also around this time that she gets pregnant from one of her customers and her pimp has her held down and has a surgeon forcibly give her an abortion and scramble her insides to prevent further pregnancies.
Did I mention that this movie is a “life- changing story of the power of unconditional and all-consuming love?” So, anyway, after she fucks her own father and involuntarily has a fetus ripped out of her, Angel moves to a small town in California and becomes such a sensation that there is a daily lottery to determine which guy has the right to pay her for sex that day. Meanwhile, a local simpleton named Michael prays to God for a wife and apparently just assumes that the next pretty girl that he sees is God’s answer to his prayers. He sees Angel and begins buying her time and, instead of having sex with her, instead utilizes the time to repeatedly proposition her for marriage. She repeatedly turns him down until she gets raped and nearly beaten to death one day and decides that marrying the creepy motherfucker might be her best option.
So they get married and move to his farm. At this point, the film becomes a seemingly endless repetition of her leaving him, rethinking things and returning to the farm. The first time, she doesn’t get very far and Michael convinces her to return. Oh, did I mention that this is a “life- changing story of the power of unconditional and all-consuming love?” So, anyway, she then gives a blowjob to her brother-in-law in exchange for a carriage ride back to the brothel, which has since caught fire and burned her friends alive. She manages to set up shop elsewhere in town before eventually returning back to Michael. She then runs away. Again. This time she starts her own restaurant (even though the movie makes no prior mention of her cooking), but her old pimp tracks her down, burns down her restaurant and forces her back into prostitution. Did I mention that this is a “life- changing story of the power of unconditional and all-consuming love?” So, anyway, she’s forced into sex slavery along with a couple of 8-year-old girls that her pimp likes to fuck, but then her pimp is lynched and she escapes with the children. She returns to the farm, decides to stay with Michael and can now magically have children, presumably because of the power of God (?).
What the fuck is the message of this movie? I’m not religious myself, but recognize that religious content can sometimes have positive messages. But I’m struggling to see the positive point of this. Is it that enduring endless rape and abuse can be rectified by finding faith? Is it that we should find faith in a God that allows the world to be filled with pedophiles and rapists because that is some sort of test? Is it that those that don’t find their way out of prostitution, human trafficking and endless cycles of abuse are only left in those situations because they don’t have faith? How are any of these things positive? The unintended implications of the film are horrifying, portraying God not as a benevolent being, but as an unforgiving sadist. That doesn’t exactly inspire me to get my ass to church this weekend.
To her credit, Abigail Cowen (who I’m not familiar with) is fine and does a commendable job creating a character that’s basically written as life’s punching bag. Granted, it’s not too hard to build sympathy for a character that is being perpetually raped and beaten, but I can’t fault her performance. I’m also not quite sure if I can fault Tom Lewis (who I’ve also never heard of) for his performance as Michael, as I don’t think that Marlon Brando could have done anything with this role. Michael is written as a blithering idiot, a vessel of blind faith that is defined by his inactivity and assumption that shit will just work out because he believes in God. The man is psychotic and infuriatingly useless, leaving Lewis with little to do but stand around wide-eyed and repeat the same platitudes about living through faith in God. He’s so complicit with whatever he perceives to be god’s will that he comes across as the worst husband in history rather than a beacon of piety. If you think that your wife has been the victim of human trafficking and you do nothing because you don’t want to interfere with god’s plan, then you are a complete piece of shit. The idea that this dickhead is meant to be a model husband is downright disturbing.
Redeeming Love is a reprehensible film. The messages and ideals that it puts forth are not only creepy, but dangerous. The core idea of idealizing (and even romanticizing) indifference toward atrocities because of faith in God’s plan is not just bad filmmaking, but irresponsible and coldly indifferent to basic human decency. On the other hand, this movie is a masterpiece of poor filmmaking. In addition to the horrifying messages, the plot is astonishingly repetitive, the characters are wafer-thin and the running time is unmerciful. If you are an aficionado of bad and ill-advised filmmaking, then this is a treasure trove of WTF moments. If you aren’t so inclined, or if you are offended by the idea that faith can overcome the removal of a woman’s reproductive organs, then steer very clear of this.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redeeming_Love_(2022_film)#/media/File:Redeeming_Love_(2022_film).jpg
