Redeeming Love (2022)
Review of Redeeming Love (2022), directed by D.J. Caruso
As I wrote on my Letterboxd review for this movie, I had to watch it for work. I had an advance screening login for Redeeming Love and didn’t bother to do any research before actually watching it. I’m kind of glad I did, because I was barely able to rein myself in during the review because the movie absolutely enraged me.
Redeeming Love is an adaptation of a 1992 bestselling novel that was popular in the Christian world, but after seeing the movie, I’m genuinely surprised that this kind of content would fly in 2022. They probably kept it close to the source material, but this isn’t the nineties anymore. None of this would clearly go well in the #MeToo era.
I have a lot to say, clearly, so let’s hop into this review. I also reviewed it for Movieweb, so if you want to read my more professional version, go onto their site here.
Set during the California Gold Rush, a young prostitute who’s turned away from God finds salvation.
This movie is set during the Gold Rush era of California, but that aspect of it is to just set the scene. Our main character is Angel, a girl who has been forced into prostitution. Her mother, played by Nina Dobrev, engaged in an affair with a married mana and had her, but in a dramatic flashback scene, we see how her father denounces her existence and basically doesn’t give a shit about his daughter. This later comes up when she’s a prostitute, as her father books her and they have sex. How wonderful.
Anyways, her mother has no money and is forced to turn to prostitution in order to make a living. She constantly preaches to Angel about God and faith, but when she gets sick and dies, Angel turns away from religion and tosses her mother’s beaded cross necklace into the ocean. She then is sold into child prostitution and grows up under the ownership of someone else.
The whorehouse is shown to be quite diverse, which I cringed at although I did my research and it is slightly accurate. There’s no representation in this movie what-so-ever, which I find quite interesting because it’s California during the Gold Rush. Not even a Latinx face appears in this film.
I find it interesting, too, that the diverse characters are killed off in the fire that burns down the prostitute house, but maybe that’s an unfortunate coincidence in this tale. It isn’t unfortunate that we see the white girls being more popular than them, even though historically other races were fetishized to the max and dehumanized.
A farmer-slash-cowboy then rides into town after praying to God to find him a wife. He says he wants anyone, and, well, fate has some plans for him.
He sees Angel in the distance (her name clearly is a pun on fallen Angel, because she is considered one) and decides that’s his wife. That’s a good basis for romance right there. He discovers she’s a prostitute, prays to God, then keeps booking her at the house without having sex with her.
He keeps on insisting he doesn’t care that she’s a prostitute, implying that somewhere she’ll find God along the way, and then eventually takes her home with him after she’s almost beat to death by the owner’s henchman.
That’s when it starts to get even more sexist and weird, because he refuses to acknowledge who she is, only who she can become. I found that sinister because not only is he gaslighting her for her past experiences through a lens of religion, but it also implies that he can shape her up into the person she will become.
This was based on a Christian belief that a country or community isn’t unified in the way that a woman isn’t faithful to her husband, and that’s some sexist ideologies right there that lay the blame on the woman. And this shows in the way that the characters are depicted.
Tom is too perfect for an 1800s man. He doesn’t do anything without consent, he’s faithful, and he just sits and waits even after Angel runs away after three times. Angel has more nuance to her character, and I would’ve been chill with a movie just about her and her acceptance of who she is.
The reality is that no matter how much Angel thinks she has a choice, she doesn’t that much. She can run away, but the movie will always pull her back to Michael whether she wants to or not.
The movie also is borderline exploitative in what it can and will do to Angel, as it seems to follow a checklist on what sins she can commit or what horrors are inflicted upon her. There’s an implication that women who do this kind of work are dirty, and we hit on feminist messages when she ponders the thought of having the power to make her own decisions, but, at the end of the day, men are deciding her path for her.
Overall Thoughts
The movie has a target audience, and I’m clearly not it. I think if you’re a religious Christian you’d find this a heartwarming tale, but as someone who studies gender and history specifically, I’m mortified.
I think it recreates the era in an interesting manner, but the actual story is horrifying to watch because it ends up taking away Angel’s agency and just giving it from man to man. It feels like trauma porn in a way that isn’t wholesome to watch unless you get a sense of satisfaction of seeing her to succumb to religion, but I, again, was just mortified.
