
Starring: Nick Afoa, Richard Short, Joe Malu Folau
Director: Paul Oremland
Country: New Zealand
UK Distributor: Peccadillo Pictures
Peter (Short) is a vicar and a widower, but the community around his church have rallied around his new partner, who is this time a man. He’s been with Jason (Afoa) for many years, but when he proposes to him live on the radio during a debate about gay marriage, the reaction from both his boyfriend and his parishioners is not as rapturous as expected. And when their gender-fluid nephew (Folau) arrives unannounced, this only complicates matters further.
A multifaceted film about LGBT+ rights and the Church, the narrative both acknowledges the progress it has made and its residual conservatism. They might accept Peter’s sexuality, but the idea that he could want to marry his partner is a step too far. But as the couple fight against traditional values about family, their own traditional views about gender are exposed by their attitudes toward their nephew, with this contrast typifying the difference between the struggles of these two generations.
The central conflict within the relationship is whether the proposal was enacted as a protest or out of real love. This dichotomy nags at Jason, while the bigger picture dominates everything for Peter. But despite all these dilemmas, the film doesn’t manage to fulfil its dramatic potential, playing it safe with non-offensive plot points that avoid passing any real judgement on the zealotry of the Church or creating any villains along the way. For some gay Christians today this may ring true, but for many others this will look like a hollow and sanitised depiction of their own lived trauma; and I speak as one of those.
The Church has a lot to answer for behaviours toward LGBT+ people past and present, but this film barely poses these questions. Peter might be a thoroughly modern vicar in a thoroughly modern Church, but the issues are the same as they have been for millennia. A mild character piece without any teeth, this is a drama that will leave the uninitiated with a rosier picture than is the truth.
UK Release: Out now on VOD, released by Peccadillo Pictures
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