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See Grace Fly Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: Not Rated Theater release: December 03, 2004 DVD release: December 03, 2004 by See Grace Fly Productions Internet release: http://www.cineclix.com (USA only) Directed by: Pete McCormack Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes Cast: Gina Chiarelli (Grace), Paul McGillion (Dominic), Tom Scholte (James), Jennifer Copping (Kate) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Editor's note: This film is opening only in limited release in Canada, but will be available to U.S. viewers at www.cineclix.com.

A schizophrenic woman, convinced that Jesus is returning in three days, draws up DaVinci-esque plans for a flying machine that will transport the faithful out of this world at the moment of the Apocalypse. When her missionary brother Dominic (Paul McGillion, a less-weathered Mel Gibson) returns from war-ravaged Sierra Leone for their mother's funeral, Grace disappears into the Vancouver streets to evade treatment and spread the word about Christ's imminent return.

If the film treated Grace's religious faith entirely as a symptom of her mental illness, See Grace Fly might hold little interest, apart from Gina Chiarelli's stunning, fearless work in the title role. But screenwriter Pete McCormack attempts something much trickier and more truthful—he gives us a woman with a legitimate faith, masked by the symptoms of mental illness. For all of Grace's confusion, we are never allowed to forget that there is a real human soul in there, an intelligent and compassionate woman who is operating with complete sanity in a world that seems to her to have lost its grip on the truth.

Gina Chiarelli is compelling in the role of Grace

The real fascination comes with one further level of complication. Could it be that Grace is not only an authentic Christian, but that she's also right? About the Second Coming? About her calling? Because she's right about a lot of things—things she couldn't know by ordinary, rational means—Dominic is forced to examine his own faith: earthbound, weary and emotionally detached.

As refreshing as it is to see a film which sets aside all the galling Bad Missionary stereotypes perpetuated by everybody from Peter Weir to Barbara Kingsolver, the faith of the Dominic character ultimately rings false—he feels more like an NGO worker than a genuine missionary. His reaction to a sexual episode late in the film just doesn't sit right. It's not that a Christian wouldn't be sexually tempted, or that some of the scene's wonderfully surprising consequences might not occur—God is wildly unpredictable, more interested in drawing people to himself than in dotting every moral "i." But Dominic's response just doesn't convince. Where's the agony of conscience, some awareness that there's been a moral compromise, something that'll need to be worked through? It's as if the writer just doesn't see the problem.

Paul McGillion plays Dominic

A great strength of McCormack's writing is a certain sense of humor and proportion, the way in which weighty moments are punctuated by a self-deprecating comment or just plain old reality. I love Grace's flashes of lucidity and frankness about her own mental difficulties, and the truths she speaks in the midst of her mania.

At other times, though, See Grace Fly suffers from First Screenplay Syndrome, with on-the-nose dialogue and undigested side-plots: particularly jarring are an incest reference that needed to be developed or cut, and an utterly peripheral sperm donor sidetrack that seriously misjudges the tone of the scene where it's inexplicably introduced. The concluding scenes reach for ambiguity and mystery but seem merely indecisive; instead of choosing among several possible resolutions, the film inexplicably hands us a couple and leaves us to sort everything out.

Tom Schulte plays the part of James

An excruciatingly tiny budget means that occasional great-looking scenes are forgotten in a visual context that's mostly bland and badly lit. But the guerilla-filming tactics also yield some of the movie's most extraordinary moments, such as an unforgettable sequence where Grace distributes yellow sticky notes to drivers stopped in traffic: real drivers, real traffic, real risk and energy.

The film's fans—and they are many, judging by a handful of festival awards—feared that technical problems would hurt its chances for theatrical release, but heart and artistic ambition have triumphed. See Grace Fly is opening in select Canadian cities and will soon be available to American viewers through www.cineclix.com.

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