Seduction is conversion in the frictionless faith-based romance Redeeming Love
There's no chemistry, just icky power imbalance, in this adaptation of the Christian bestseller
Film Reviews Redeeming Love
Redeeming Love is a kinky power fantasy in the halfway convincing disguise of wholesome faith-based entertainment. Based on the 1991 international bestseller by born-again romance novelist Francine Rivers, the film applies the magic-hour glow of a Nicholas Sparks adaptation—complete with majestic sunsets, cute canine companions, and at least one terminal illness—to the unbalanced love story between a long-suffering sex worker and the pious farmer who thinks he’s ordained to make her his wife. However it does at the box office this weekend, it’s going to absolutely slay at youth-group movie nights to come, where pastors’ children will fidget in their seats, their inevitable races to the altar hastened by two and a half hours of horny holiness.
Faithfully adapted from its enduringly popular source material (Rivers co-wrote the screenplay herself), the film is set in the California of 1850—a time and place it approximates with all the gritty verisimilitude of an amusement park’s Old West district. The ironically named Angel (Abigail Cowen) is the most coveted of the women at the local brothel in the ironically named Gold Rush town of Paradise. She was sold into prostitution as a child—just one hardship of many in her unyieldingly tragic backstory, which the film gradually reveals through a series of flashbacks punishing in both the miserable misfortune they depict and the minutes they tack onto the runtime. Needless to say, Angel has been disabused of her faith; we know this thanks to an early scene of her symbolically chucking a cross into a stream.
Enter Michael (Tom Lewis), as squeaky clean of conscience as he is of hygiene. He might be the most chicly well-groomed farm boy of the 1800s, with perfectly shaped facial hair and not a grain of dirt under his nails. Michael prays for a wife, and God obliges by putting Angel in his love-at-first-sightline. Her occupation makes her unlikely marriage material for a good Christian boy, but Michael is up for a challenge, paying for the pleasure of her company in a non-euphemistic sense and burdening her with nightly proposals she repeatedly rejects, probably because this resolute stranger possesses the charisma of an understudy in a Bible college production of Oklahoma! “No man is going to own me,” she sensibly declares. God help any viewer naive enough to believe her independent streak will survive his persistence.
Redeeming Love has none of the sub-professional production values or hysterical culture-war dog-whistling of a Pure Flick. (Though the villain, a pedophiliac baron named The Duke, does firm up his ungodly bona fides by performing forced abortions). The film is more like the cinematic equivalent of Christian rock, vaguely approximating the appeal of a sweeping Western romance for the churchgoing crowd. The performances range from serviceable to surprisingly solid, with an overqualified Logan Marshall-Green bringing a relative depth of emotion to his supporting role as Michael’s widowed brother-in-law, a more complicated character than just about anyone else on screen. Taking a breather from journeyman jobs like the last xXx sequel, director D.J. Caruso lends the project a handsome Hollywood sheen, setting montages to the secular sounds of Kacey Musgraves and bathing everything in a beatific light. (The epigraph, Shakespeare’s insistence that “All that glitters is not gold,” reads like an inadvertent self-critique.)
Still, there’s something icky about this love story. It hinges on a fundamental power imbalance: Angel literally can’t say no to Michael’s evening visits (even if all he wants during them is to press her constantly about the life he can give her), and when she finally does accept his proposal, it’s while lying bruised and battered after one of her employer’s thugs beats her within an inch of her life. At best, Michael has a serious savior complex. At worst, it’s some God-fearing mutation of the whole Madonna-whore deal, maybe a desire to make one into the other—to assure that the “finest girl west of the Rockies” is his and his alone. Rivers claims to have modeled Redeeming Love on the Book of Hosea, but in what way is Angel, trafficked from a young age, a sinner in need of redemption? She’s a faultless victim, not a lost transgressor.
What we’re seeing, in the end, is a kind of merging of courtship and missionary work: a denominational Harlequin romance where getting the girl and saving her soul are one and the same. Isn’t the pushy determination of a smitten boy who refuses to take no for an answer a kissing cousin to tireless evangelizing? Those not charmed or aroused by the story of a woman who eventually relents to the entreaties of a preachy suitor, if only as an alternative to the nonstop misery she’s otherwise experienced, will be left to acknowledge the screaming void where the chemistry should be. There’s no real tension here, because Michael is a boringly incorruptible saint, waiting patiently for the woman he doesn’t know but loves all the same to come around. Maybe there’s an accidental critique in Redeeming Love, a twin portrait of seduction and conversion as acts of just steadily wearing someone down.
50 Comments
Godspeed, Dowd! Hope to see (plus) you writing somewhere else real soon!
Hear! Hear!
Dowd, very sad to see you go. I keep saying I’ll quit this site after all the shit they do, and how they seem to want to get rid of the commentariat, but there just aren’t any other sites to go to really. As for this movie, Logan Marshall-Green was always a bargain rack version of a combination of five other already-boring actors, but it is really sad to see Famke Janssen in this dreck. I remember for a little while there Jon Favreau was putting her in some roles that were worthy of her, guess that stopped, Hollywood is brutal for actresses of her age.
He and other folks are here until the beginning of March, so I’ll stick around until then, I want to support good work (also, I hope Dowd goes out on a C+, for old time’s sake). But then I’m finally done. It’s notable that Noel Murray and a lot of other freelancers are walking away from the site as well because of how shitty G/O is treating its workers, there’s no point in supporting a company this bad. What a stupid way to kill something.
I too am done after that. I can’t support in any way a company that treats its employees with such grotesque contempt. But I’ll say this: I’ve always enjoyed your posts, Miller, and enjoyed making Dick Miller jokes is response to them. (He’s my favourite actor by a long way.) I’ve been around here a long time – I used to be Burl, and someone else before that, and I even wrote maybe four pieces that were published here – and the distance this place has fallen since its glory days gives me vertigo to think about. Or reverse vertigo, or something. Anyway, all the best to everyone!
Burl!
Ha ha!
Ha ha!
Holy shit, Burl! Ha ha! Good to see you, man. And right back at you — I like to think I go off the beaten path in search of weirdo movies but you have an incredible depth of knowledge of cool schlock (very befitting a Dick Miller fan) and your comments showed it, glad you got a chance to publish a few things here.
What?? I can’t believe this…
Actually I can, this site has been going to shit every so often. So we got until March, then. Dowd was my last anchor. If anyone knows of a better place, I’d be glad to check it out. End of and era, man.
But there’s no Marvel movies being released in March for the C+ to get applied to!
Yeah. I was planning to stick around at least partially for Noel and the other long-time freelancers, but now that they’re seemingly all cutting ties too, there’s not much point in continuing to read and comment here. Sad times.
So…why does the AV Club cover this stuff exactly? The conclusions of the reviewers are forgone. The overwhelming majority of the readership is almost certainly not interested in the movies themselves, just vaguely entertained by documentation of someone else’s hate watch. But I guess I answered my own question, huh?
Reviews like this are fun! I have no interest in watching this dreck, but hearing why it’s so terrible is an interesting read and worth the click.
Yeah. I mean, I clicked too. The whole process just seems a little, I don’t know, smug and echo-chamber-y. Guilty too though.
The big issue is that back in the day there was enough resources for the AV Club to cover this stuff plus tons of stuff that was interesting and worth checking out. This place is being hallowed out a little bit at a time. So it gets to the point where you ask if it’s worth it to cover this stuff while for example, there are no episodic reviews of The Witcher s2 or the last season of Lucifer.
You know what I liked? Reasonable discussions. Just post what you want and go with it. But no, we don’t do freedom and community anymore. OK, that sounded whinier than I wanted it to, but it is all pretty dreary.
Luckily Jimothy Herbfellow’s excellent management means that it’s gonna be completely empty come March when every writer leaves.
So…why did mumbles click this link? The conclusions of the commenter are foregone. The overwhelming majority of their time on this review is almost certainly not interested in the review itself, just vaguely entertained by documenting their own holier than thou attitudeBut I guess I answered my own question, huh?
Yes, who will stand up for the downtrodden Christians being mocked? Why, it’s DongsAplenty8000! Seemingly an odd choice for a crusader against snarky atheism, but then again we live in a world in which Donald Trump is considered such a crusader by millions of Christians, so who knows these days?
Lol you need to work on your reading comprehension and understanding of context clues, my dude
At best, Michael has a serious savior complex.
I suppose that’s fitting for a dramatic film, which thrives on putting characters in peril so they can be saved. If it’s at the beginning of the screenplay, it can be a cat that gets saved to establish that we should like the protagonist.
Well, all of the protagonists at the end of “A TALKING CAT?!” worked together to save the life of a cat, and I still hated all of them!
You even hated the dad?
Okay, the Dad I’ll give a pass despite the terrible Humphrey Bogart impression and terrible taste in women (Cheese Puff Mom is really the worst).
I just Googled “Logan Marshall Green” because the name was familiar but not the face and the next Google question was “is Logan Marshall Green Tom Hardy?” like it was one long sentence (but having seen their pictures, HFS I see why that’s such a popular question)
Logan Marshall-Green’s real name is Not Tom Hardy. This leads to the fun of being able to say that a movie stars Not Tom Hardy, not Tom Hardy.
Tom Hardly
when I read “faith-based romance” (after snorting derisively just because) I wondered, how do these things keep getting made? But then I looked at the cast and realized this probably cost $1-2 million to make, and if it’s the right production company that’s content to make ~$10 million on dreck like this (a 5-10x return), it’s a good investment. It does make you wonder how much even established actors like Janssen and LMG get paid for stuff like this, and do they need the work that badly? Does this mean Janssen has passed her “last fuckable day” threshold and must now content herself with roles like this (I assume) “frontier madame”?
Management takes a cut. Lawyers take a cut. Professional expenses take a cut. If you can’t do a great job at self tapes, gotta hire someone. Like your union benefits? You gotta book gigs in order to get health insurance. Oh, it’s a location shoot? Hopefully the production company will pay for transportation and housing, but it’s not guaranteed. And are you planning on eating when not on set? Etc. The “outgo” for actors is high. Add in pandemic, and suddenly you are making pig slop and happy to do so. tl;dr The vast majority of actors don’t actually make as much as civilians think we do.
Civilians? Are actors also mandatorily enlisted in the local National Guard too?“A SAG card and here’s your uniform, soldier, see you the first weekend of every month!”
🎶 I don’t know what I’ve been toldFaith-based films are getting old!We will do them anyway!And earn our paychecks the easy way! 🎶LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT!
I assumed the pay scale for actors was basically a flat line with a narrow huge spike at the far end for the Cruises and Hanks’s of the world, but thanks for confirming that. Now I *really* can’t process how the B and C tier actors can afford to live in California.Are you an actor I might have heard of?
Maybe they keep getting made because there are people who wish to see them? That makes the most sense to me
I think the more correct answer is “there are enough people who want to see them *that the producers make a profit*”. Even the most pious small filmmaker can only tolerate a handful of losers before they have to turn a profit. I’m sure *someone* wants to see these movies but if it’s only 28 people, they’ll stop being made.
Well, yeah, film in America is a business first and foremost. Of course it has to turn a profit. But I have been paying deep attention to movies for around 20 years and for the entire length of that time people have been baffled that faith based movies make money. Clearly there’s an audience there
To no one’s surprise, the whole thing is a grift. Passion of the Christ really invigorated the evangelical film scene, and the mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s were absolutely chock full of these types of movies as a result: Soul Surfer, Fireproof, C Me Dance, God’s Not Dead, and so forth. Some of these films are actually produced by church ministries (Fireproof and 2006’s Facing the Giants, for example, were produced by the Sherwood Baptist Church based in Georgia), meaning that they’re essentially financed from donations to the church. Not only that, but the producers of these films also engage in grassroots marketing efforts with evangelical ministers around the country, encouraging them to promote the film in their sermons and otherwise advertise them to their congregations. Many churches, of course, also host watch parties or take large groups to see these movies in theaters. I worked in a large multiplex when this trend first started, and it was not unusual to have whole screens rented out by churches for these movies. Furthermore, the marketing for these films has played up the persecution complex of evangelicals, positing the films as a sort of protest against liberal Hollywood and their sinful agendas, and sending a message that you’re not a “true Christian” if you don’t support these films (and books, and music, and all of these other media peddled to evangelicals). It should be noted, as well, that the infamous Pure Flix did in fact co-produce Redeeming Love; they have recently changed their name to Pinnacle Peak Pictures.
As for what Famke Jannsen is doing in this film, take a look at her recent filmography and let me know the most recent film you’ve even HEARD of. For me, it was 2014’s Taken 3. Since then, she’s been in basically nothing but DTV trash, along with a couple notable TV roles.
I wondered how many churches and big ministries like Joel Osteen financed these; you’d think they would have no qualms with extending their grift into movies, but perhaps the church grift is more lucrative than the movies, which again, I’m sure are profitable on a “percent ROI” basis, but would not satisfy the producers of the Avengers or Star Wars movies.
My youth-group movie night had movies like “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, but then it was pre-cable TV in a one-movie-theatre town and they were actually trying to attract a crowd.
I was never part of a youth group but I agree with you that this does not sound like a film that some young boys and girls would get together in one room at someone’s home to watch. If the boys or girls wanted to see pron, they would just use their own phone/tablets to take a peek at naughty images.
The idea of a bunch of girls and boys in a room watching a naughty film and the guys and gals having to hide the awkward reactions they might be having to viewing such images sounds like a scene that would be cut even from the teen raunch comedies of the 80s and 90s (I turned 50 last year and have seen a fair number of these films, mostly on streaming/home video). This scene would be cut because, yuck….not something that would be likely to happen in real life.
We were watching Salam’s Lot and Night of the Living Dead at our youth lock-ins, but then again, my youth pastor actually brought in a doctor to teach us sex ed and how to use contraceptives because the school wouldn’t.
LOL as I watching the preview a pop-up appeared saying “are you abandoning t***p and the Republicans???” Guess they know their audience don’t they–a bunch of rubes who can be easily hustled using guilt.
Dowd, while I didn’t always agree with you, I still really enjoyed reading your reviews over the years. I’m sorry for how you (and everyone else at this website) has been treated. Good luck out there. I hope you land on your feet (and that you and Iggy can find a way to do something together!)
Farewell…When I first saw the names I thought the guy from Lucifer was the male lead, which would have been amusing, at least. Sad to think that variations of these types of movies made 80 years ago with women like Barbara Stanwyck were more forward-thinking than this type of trash.
Civilians tend not to have a clue how much actors make vs professional expenses. Especially if you are female and passed your “fuckable by white boys” age. Add in stuff like needing to work to qualify for your union insurance, and bills piling up due to the pandemic, and this cast list makes depressing sense.
This being such a delight to read just makes Dowd’s departure hurt more. I’m done once he leaves in early March too. I’ve been coming here for like a decade, it’s a real bummer.
Oh shame, DJ Caruso! I remember when you made The Salton Sea.
I’m here for when Pious Boy wants his new wife to get a little freaky and she brains him with a frying pan
I expect to see your work soon, Dowd. F*ck GOMedia and the culture of disposability that this place welcomed.