You Can Live Forever

After her father's death, Jaime is sent to Quebec to live with an aunt inside a Jehovah's Witness congregation. There she meets Marike, the daughter of one of its elders. The two grow close. Marike's whole life, her family and her future are bound to the congregation; nothing of Jaime's is. The film is not interested in love. It is interested in the two of them not standing to lose the same thing: Jaime can leave, and if Marike leaves she loses everyone. The film never softens that asymmetry and gives an ending to match. The form has an eighties texture: provincial Quebec, congregation meetings, door-to-door ministry and school scenes. The palette is faded. Sarah Watts and Mark Slutsky wrote and directed. Watts grew up as a Jehovah's Witness herself, and the film draws on that; the workings of the congregation are shown from inside and in detail rather than as an object of outside curiosity. Anwen O'Driscoll plays Jaime and June Laporte plays Marike. Who it is for: viewers who like coming-of-age drama and films that look at faith communities from within. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a happy ending. The film grants no side an easy way and its final section is heavy.