• Release year: 2025
• Director: Robert Vaughn.
• Producers: Jennifer Gibson, Robert Vaughn and Sahar Whelan.
• Screenplay by: Allie Jennings.
• Cinematography by: Justin Yaroski.
• Music by: Stacey Hersh.

Shotgun Commentary: captivating coming of age story.

Review

This Time raises awareness about the dystopian, cruel practice of “conversion therapy”. For those of you unfamiliar with this procedure, it’s essentially a bunch of people with a medieval mentality trying to convince a group of queer people of the error of their ways. They tell them over and over that nobody will love them if they are queer. That it goes against God’s wishes and a bunch of other nonsense like that.

If repeating lies over and over doesn’t create enough trauma to force them back into the closets, some practices use electroshock and other brutal techniques to “cleanse” them of their queerness. Of course, a lot of “patients” are not there on their own volition. Tons of them are there because their small-minded families have committed them in order to “cure their disease”.

Right on the feelings

The feature follows Grace Mitchum (Anwen O’Driscoll), a teenager who is caught kissing a girl by her stepfather. As a result of this, he intends to commit her to a conversion therapy centre. This leads to her escaping in a hearse, unknowingly taking the drunk hearse driver along with her, as he is slipping it off in the back seat.

The official excuse for the journey is her desire to lay her father’s ashes to rest according to his instructions and getting to know him on the way. However, she is merely trying to face the trauma of being abandoned by her dad and understand why he did it. Her companion on the journey, hearse driver Red (Charles Martin Smith), is an alcoholic who abandoned his own daughter, making their dynamic therapeutic in a way.

Sad as the premise might seem, it is actually quite a light film considering the topics it brings up. The pacing is fast for a movie with so much drama, and the dialogues can be quite hilarious at times. Still, it never looses its grip on reality. The tragedies and *ssholes everyone has to put up with as a part of life are very much present in the film.

Bless them

This Time certainly doesn’t hold back its criticism of the Church, and why would it? The existence of conversion centres, as well as the constructs that made them necessary in certain people’s eyes, came out of this institution.

Much like it happened with Eve coming out of Adam’s rib, the translations of the Bible are not quite accurate. Instead, they are modified to serve this organisation’s interests. This would not be as offensive (people can believe whatever they want), if it didn’t affect so many people negatively. You can choose to not be queer if that is who you are, but that doesn’t give you any right to tell other people what they should or shouldn’t be, much less to bully them into thinking they need to be heterosexual in order to find love or justify their existence.

Just in case normal reasoning or showcasing the issue through Gracie isn’t enough, the feature makes sure to make the importance of their message clear by throwing in some blood-chilling statistics in the US. In all fairness, the numbers are way worse if you look at the whole world, and the most violent statistics are left out. However, just a taste of it should be enough for some people to rethink about their life decisions and prejudices.

Men and bears

Much like the influence of the Church, sexism is another plague humanity can’t quite get rid of. Most of the men in Grace’s life, excluding her road trip buddy, act with a sadly typical male behaviour. They mansplain left and right, use violence when they feel hurt, and never bother to listen to women because they assume they know best. Sure, not all men are like that, some are like Red. Nevertheless, they are still a big enough number for women to keep choosing the bear.

All in all, This Time brings a very accurate portrayal of teenage queer life in a Christian environment. It calls out organisations and people alike and brings awareness to a horrible situation many children and teenagers are enduring just being different from the comfortable norm. The piece is not only delightful and engaging, but also crucial as a way to show support for anyone who hasn’t been lucky enough to grow up in an accepting and unconditionally loving household.

If you are in the UK and This Time has piqued your interest, you can now watch it online from the 15th to the 17th of November in the Streaming Online programme of One Fluid Night International LGBTQIA+ Film Festival!

Advice to take from this movie:

• Conversion therapies only make people depressed and repressed.
• If the love you have for your family is conditional, you shouldn’t have a family.
• It’s okay to not forgive people sometimes.

What’s your take? Have you watched This Time? Don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message in my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀