Review from Parlez Moi, Blogspot.com

November 1, 2009

I stumbled on a movie this morning and wound up spending an hour and a half watching it while knitting lace and drinking coffee. It is a little known indie film called Into Temptation with no actors whose names I recognized and yet some absolutely gorgeous performances - especially by Jeremy Sisto and Kristin Chenowith.

Sisto plays a priest who is the pastor and only priest assigned to an urban church, The Church of Mary Magdalene (interesting name as the story unfolds). He is overworked, underpaid, tired and bored. He spends his days tending his flock: managing a shelter for alcoholic men, counseling parishioners dealing with unemployment, doubts about their Faith, realizing they are gay, etc. He sits in the confessional listening to middle-aged women go on and on about their husbands' inadequacies. He gives boring sermons to small congregations that aren't interested. He's having a tough time.

Then one day a woman comes into his confessional who tells him that she is a prostitute, is tired of the life, was molested by her step-father, and is going to commit suicide on her upcoming birthday. The rest of the movie is about Father Buerlein's attempt to find the woman before it is too late.

I found the movie disturbing in that this priest wound up going into a very steamy, depraved, ugly world --- the world of sex-for-sale --- in search of this woman. Along the way we meet some interesting characters including an old girlfriend and a hilarious, spoiled but still faithful, priest to a wealthy parish who is an old friend from their seminary days.

It's hard to explain how moving this movie was. In large part this was due to the very fine performances by Sisto as the sometimes-bumbling, often frustrated, yet still committed priest, and by Chenowith as the sad, mysterious, broken call-girl. The ending, most especially, is touching because we see, heart-breakingly, how one single act of kindness done decades before, became the one light in a dark and shattered life.

I don't know why I was so captivated by this story. Probably because the two main characters were like all the unrecognized souls that we encounter every day. Both of them chose a way of life and both of them have dealt with their choice as best they can and yet both can't stop wondering what the hell they are doing. And, in the end.... well, I won't tell you the end. But I will say that the very last scene will stay with me for a very long time.