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

In “You Can Live Forever,” Jaime and Marike do many issues youngsters in love do, like trying 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 journey 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 neighborhood, 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 also 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 frequent coming-of-age trajectory. There is a way of a missed alternative in that we see the motion via 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 music for that.

You Can Live Forever
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms.