Their activism for different sides of an important topic doesn't have any negative impact on their attraction to each other. The sexual tension builds as they get to know each other, and their awkward friendship turns romantic. Soon Lucy is anxiously awaiting the next protest so that she can meet up with Mercy. When they meet, the ironically named Mercy (Kate Mara) aggressively flirts with the shy and confused Lucy, and the two sneak out for drinks at a bar. Lucy's eyes lock on those of a striking young woman from the other side. Across the parking lot, the pro-death penalty side hold their own signs and keep their own vigil. She travels around the country in a well-worn motorhome with her older sister Martha (Amy Seimetz, UPSTREAM COLOR) and their little brother Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell, CAPTAIN FANTASTIC), as they partake in the anti-death penalty demonstrations outside the prison gates as the next execution takes place. With this latest, however, Israeli director Tali Shalom-Ezer and British writer Joe Barton combine for a romantic story where death row plays a vital part. The only one I can remember that even comes close to also being a love story is MONSTER'S BALL (2001), and if you've seen it, you would likely agree that it's not exactly a warm and fuzzy story of romance. These include: THE GREEN MILE (1999), DEAD MAN WALKING (1995), THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE (2003), and TRUE CRIME (1999). There have been some fine movies centered on death row. Polish cinematographer Radek Ladczuk, who shot The Babadook, presents the down-and-out Middle-American backdrops in a starkly realistic fashion but also does his job to help the stars look good.Greetings again from the darkness. Playing the friskier of the two, Mara has fun with her role the two are a good onscreen match. Now 30, Page still looks ten years younger and delivers strongly as an emotionally stunted young woman who’s been robbed of anything resembling a normal or amorous life due to her father’s predicament. To its credit, the film doesn’t propagandize against the death penalty but, rather, dramatizes the fact of the matter as it finally hits family members when all options run out. The best moments lie simply in the interchanges between the two women good friends in real life, Page and Mara, according to the press notes, were looking for a project to do together for some time until finding this one, and their verbal sparring and intimate scenes, of which there are several, feel warm and credible, even if they don’t go too far.Īs the execution date for Lucy’s father approaches and the existence of a boyfriend of Mercy’s rears its head, things get grim again. All this goes on in a depressed environment filled with trailer dwellers, grungy bikers, all-day beer drinkers and all-round no-hopers-Trump-country, some will call it. The older Mercy is decidedly the aggressor, dropping suggestive innuendo and seemingly stimulated by Lucy’s self-protectively sarcastic remarks on a moment-to-moment basis, the interplay between the two is engaging and rife with an erotic undercurrent. What’s agreeable and appealing here is how slowly and naturalistically matters gestate between the two it does seem somewhat contrived that two such diametrically opposed women could clear a path toward a relationship, but their obsessions overlap to a degree, just as there could be unknown separate issues that bring them together. Still, love has overcome bigger obstacles than this, and it’s pretty clear from the get-go that Mercy has something on her mind other than carrying signs and batting around the age-old arguments. Mercy is on hand because the man who’s about to have his final meal smoked the partner of her police officer father cop killers deserve no leniency in her book. Martha, in particular, refuses to accept Dad’s guilt and still hopes to find enough exonerating evidence to get him off the hook. Lucy, whose wardrobe initially seems to consist exclusively of an anti-death penalty t-shirt, is there with her older sister Martha (Amy Seimetz) and younger brother Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell) because their father (Elias Koteas) is on death row for murdering his wife-their mother-eight years earlier. The two women are on opposite sides of the debate.
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