‘You Can Live Forever’ Review: Do You Love Me Now?

Published: May 04, 2023

In “You Can Live Forever,” Jaime and Marike do many issues youngsters in love do, like wanting soulfully into one another’s eyes and making out in a automobile’s again seat. They additionally knock on doorways to proselytize for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Yeah, that final one goes to be an issue for budding lesbians.

Complicating issues additional, Jaime (Anwen O’Driscoll) is a latest transplant to their small Quebec city and goes alongside for the spiritual experience solely to be with Marike (June Laporte), a believer who was raised in “the Truth.”

The intersection of homosexuality and religion has been explored in movie earlier than — Sebastián Lelio’s “Disobedience,” set among the many Orthodox Jewish group, is a high-profile latest instance — and Mark Slutsky and Sarah Watts’s story advantages from being rooted in Watts’s personal expertise rising up homosexual within the Nineties. As if to underline that the movie is ready in that decade, Jaime by no means appears to take off her flannel and beanie, and kisses Marike to the sound of the Breeders; Gayle Ye’s cinematography can be a pleasant washed-up hue, as if bleached of daring colours — very true to the grunge sensibility.

Otherwise “You Can Live Forever” sticks to a reasonably widespread coming-of-age trajectory. There is a way of a missed alternative in that we see the motion by way of the eyes of Jaime, who’s extra accepting of her sexuality from the beginning, leaving Marike a tantalizing clean. She initiates each transfer with Jaime, solely to segue into Bible research or a double date with boys. How does Marike rationalize this new love and her religion? Even the Breeders don’t have a track for that.

You Can Live Forever
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and out there to hire or purchase on most main platforms.

Source web site: www.nytimes.com