The Women of Grace...are Amazing

Alright, I'm tired of being a super slacker. This college junk is muy muy dificil this semester. Now that my BS Gen Ed's are all a thing of the past, I'm getting my ass chomped by classes. Anyway, I need to stop neglecting you all before I come home and you are all sporting Blood's tattoo's and rocking red bandanas.

Amongst the plethora of films that I've managed to get my grubby paws on the past couple of weeks, I've been given a huge bundle of mediocre, despair, and downright embarassing to admit I've seen. Yet, in every load of rough, there's a diamond...and Grace was gleaming more than the one thrown off the Titanic.

This film was exploding with female subject matter to the point that you'd have to be convinced it was written by me or something. However, we're very very wrong. This film is brilliantly made by Paul Solet...and yes Paul is NOT short for Pauline, who disturbingly dedicated the film for his mom. As drop dead sexy as Paul Solet is...that's a little insane. However, no one ever said insane was a bad thing. The film blew me away. Some may think the reason I was so moved was because it's a blood thirsty baby and a killing mother, however I was more moved by the character development and relationships than anything.

SPOILER WARNING: Yeah, I'm spoiling some stuff. So run awaaaaaay.

First, I want to applaud him for showcasing a lesbian affair without making it some steamy hot sex scene. Sorry Jennifer's Body, but in this sort of thing, you do not compare. It's set up as if there is nothing strange or unusual or "special case" about their relationship at all, which I ADORE. All too often when a gay or lesbian relationship is in a script, its this huge spectacle. It wasn't so in this film. I also love how it wasn't just dropped in our faces out of nowhere. The relationship began to become more prominent as the film goes on. In the beginning when Michael and Madeline are having sex, she looks so indifferent about the situation. At first I thought, "you're doing it wrong" but after the film picks up you realize he was doing it right..she just doesn't swing that way. When Patricia visits Madeline for the first time, you can tell the moment she walks in the door that she is in love with her. there was just an air about her and the way she carried herself. It was breathtaking. Not to mention there's a pretty nifty girl-girl-girl love triangle going on. Patricia's girlfriend is well aware of Madeline and Patricia's former flame and her jealousy towards it almost gets Madeline killed. You don't see that happen very often.

Madeline's mother-in-law Vivian is one of the creepiest characters I've ever seen in a film in a long while. I honestly will say that I've never fully thought about how a mother would cope with the loss of their son when their child is fully grown. The breastfeeding sex scene is by far the most terrifying scene in the entire movie, and this is a film about a baby that feeds on its mother like a praying mantis. Vivian also has this unspeakable power to control all of the men in her life. She has full control over her husband, her son, and even her Dr. which makes me question the relationship between them. She's every woman's ultimate nightmare of the meddling mother-in-law...to the tenth power.

Of course, we can't talk about this film without touching on the relationship between Madeline, and her baby Grace. The bond between mother and child is something that can never be explained, only experienced; and until we have that experience, we can never begin to even come close to understanding it. This movie asks us the question "how far does that bond go?" and this movie proves something we have speculated for centuries...there is NO limit. A lesbian, vegan, mother who has obviously only begun a relationship with a man for the sheer fact to have a child, has begun murdering people to harvest their blood in order to feed her child. How's that for a bond? This woman is willing to inflict pain upon herself in order to keep her child alive. This relationship could have been campy and cheesy but you know something, it's not. It's real. The relationship between Madeline and Grace is admirable and has a closer resemblance to mother and child than almost any film I've seen in the past 5 years. I had a long talk with my own mother about the film and low and behold...she agreed she'd do the same.

This film is breathtaking, terrifying, disturbing, moving, and inspiring. How it does that all at the same time, I don't know....but Paul Solet does it, and he does it well.