You Can Live Forever: Gay Teen Life in a Jehovah's Witness Village Where 'The Truth' is a Tight Fit
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
The title of this first feature from co-writers and directors Mark Slutsky and Sarah Watts, You Can Live Forever, is a perfect encapsulation of what it is to be 17.
Of course you can live forever! Because (A) you haven’t wrapped your head around the idea of your own mortality, and (B) depending on your emotional state at the moment, “forever” can be anywhere from two weeks to two seasons away.
Jaime and Marike (Anwen O'Driscoll, June Laporte) are very much 17, bundles of fear, confusion, lust, guilt and anxiety, certain only of their immortality. No one has it easy at that age, but Jaime’s woes are acute. Her father has recently died, and her mother, unable to cope, has sent her to stay with her aunt Beth (Liane Balaban), a member of the Jehovah’s Witness community in Saguenay, Que.
June Laporte and Anwen O’Driscoll in You Can Live Forever.
Jaime understands a little about the religion, but she doesn’t practice it. She doesn’t speak French. She doesn’t know anyone at her new school. And in one of the first scenes, she accidentally drops her Walkman off a bridge. This being 1992, such a mishap basically qualifies as a medical trauma for an adolescent.
Read our interview with filmmakers Mark Slutsky and Sarah Watts
And then she meets Marike, a devout member of the church with an easygoing smile and a carefree manner. The two girls hit it off almost immediately. But soon their friendship starts to blossom into something more, something with which the church, for all its talk of love, is going to have a problem.
This seems a germane time to mention that Watts, one of the filmmakers, was born in Yellowknife and grew up gay in a Jehovah’s Witness community. I’ve been asked not to say the film was inspired by her life, and I wouldn’t stoop to imply. Although that scene about the “right” way to make Kraft Dinner is clearly drawn from someone’s experience.
In any case, her background informs the respectful way the film treats both its characters and their beliefs. A religion many know merely for its door-to-door proselytizing zeal is delivered here as more than just a knock-knock joke.
Similarly, the burgeoning romance between the two main characters is carefully crafted to avoid demeaning their feelings – at least, by the viewers. The maternal figures in the girls’ lives – Jaime’s aunt, and Marike’s older sister Amanda (rising Canadian star Deragh Campbell) – quickly figure out that something is happening, though neither seems entirely certain what to do about it.
Amanda is a fascinating character. Though Campbell is just a few years older than Laporte, I at first took her to be the teenager’s mother. But we soon learn that Marike’s mother left “the Truth,” as the religion is known, and that the rest of the family has been told to think of her as literally dead to them. Amanda has stepped into the role of maternal caregiver, a responsibility she takes seriously. The contrast between Marike’s pretend-dead mother and Jaime’s really-dead father is stark.
Also nicely handled is the slow build of tension between the girls. Jaime’s first inkling that Marike has feelings for her is when they have a sleepover, and Jaime finds her friend spooning her. Ah, but recall Steve Martin and John Candy in the then-recent Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Nothing gay there! Similarly, Marike’s bestowal of a sudden, quick kiss – after a prayer no less! – leaves her friend uncertain what, if anything, just happened.
If I have any complaint about You Can Live Forever, it is the lack of development for some of its secondary characters. Marike’s younger brother is practically invisible, and Jaime’s friend Nathan (Hasani Freeman) acts as little more than a sounding board, with all the two-dimensionality that implies. There’s also an odd scene about two-thirds in that briefly switches the film’s point of view, jarringly so. But one can forgive the occasional stumble in such a powerful debut feature.
For all its specificity, You Can Live Forever is not really a movie about religion. It is certainly not the searing indictment that was Boy Erased, Joel Edgerton’s 2018 film about a religious-themed gay conversion therapy program. But neither is it particularly hopeful for the lot of those within the Jehovah’s Witness movement when their feelings and desires do not conform with The Truth.
Without giving away the crux or climax of the film, it should be noted that many religions preach the doctrine of eternal life. But there is a caveat, sometimes unspoken – are we talking everlasting salvation or perpetual sorrow? And who decides what that looks like?
You Can Live Forever. Directed by Mark Slutsky and Sarah Watts. Starring Anwen O’Driscoll, June Laporte and Deragh Campbell. Opens March 24 in Toronto at the Cineplex Cinemas Varsity and VIP. Opens March 31 in Vancouver and Montreal.