Cloudburst

This marvelous little, independent flick somehow escaped me for years. At first sight it's just a typical road movie. Two old ladies, a lesbian couple for 31 years, escape from the indignities of a nursing home and drive to Canada to get married. There is a hitchhiker, a modern dancer/stripper, and people and situations one encounters on a road trip. What makes this movie a jewel are two fantastic actresses, two Oscar winners, Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker. Their chemistry, their ease with which they just put on a skin and soul of their characters makes this flick a treasure. Farewell Ms. Dukakis, you'll be missed.

This was an excellent movie. The 3 stars Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker and Ryan Doucette give outstanding performances and make the characters believable and interesting. Thom Fitzgerald takes a simple story and turns it into a wonderful journey with spectacular backdrops spectacular performances from his cast. In the course of 2 hours he is able to develop each of the main characters so that we really care about each of them. The minor Characters are a little cliché at times but it never takes away from the story or what makes this a great movie. The movie has course language but if you are not upset by this you will find yourself laughing and crying all within the length of the movie. Do yourself a favour and go see this!

The brief synopsis of this story is that it's about two old lesbians living in Maine who pick up a hitchhiker. That's not a very good synopsis. This movie is about two people who have loved each other and lived together for 31 years. Age and a selfish granddaughter threaten to end the relationship so these two octogenarian ladies decide to run away in an old, red pickup truck through the back roads of Maine to Canada where they can be married. Along the way they pick up a young, male hitchhiker who happens to be a modern/exotic dancer from New York. This trio then takes an unlikely road trip with a series of misadventures and adventures through the beautifully photographed landscape of eastern Canada.

Olympia Dukakis plays a role you might never expect to see: a crusty old lesbian with the mouth of the saltiest sailor. She is magnificent. Brenda Fricker plays the blind, wise old woman. You root for her every step of the way. A very funny Ryan Doucette plays the hitchhiker. You'd never know this was his first movie.

This movie places everything you expect from a romantic comedy/drama and pours it into new vessels not previously used to hold this vintage. The movie has already played in theaters in every country but the US. In the US, the Lifetime cable channel purchased it, so the language is not likely to survive un-bleeped. Not to worry, it appears on DVD in July, 2013 so you can see it as the author intended: sweet, salty, and well done. (We just saw this movie in San Jose, CA as part of the Camera Cinema Club.)

Really! Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker portray lesbians that have been in my life, foul mouth and all. To those who says this movie is not 100% realistic, well, thank heavens for that! These characters are real enough and the humor is great. The real life consequences of getting old, living as unmarried, unrecognized partners is very real and can be very painful. And those issues are brought forth with irony, clarity, raunchiness and loving tenderness. Just like life.

The young hitchhiker character was endearing, bringing another additional layer of the complexity of human relationships into the mix. This movie is lighthearted at times, laughing out loud funny here and there, and dramatizes the struggles of being homosexual, elderly, and being authentically out of the norm.

(TLDR: I definitely recommend watching this.)

The title sums up my initial thought about the movie - a lesbian COMEDY? A lighthearted lesbian movie where nobody goes to conversion therapy camp and nobody cheats on their husband? Nobody goes through a traumatic coming out to their family and friends which then Have a Hard Time? Wild, unbelievable.

Hold your horses if you got too excited by this crazy occurence though - we couldn't do without at least one typical lgbt-movie thing - It's an lgbt themed movie so of course someone dies (not tagging as spoiler because honestly - you most likely already knew that, this is how common this is).

Also there's a weird ammount of naked men in this for a movie about lesbians.

I liked the raunchy over the top, brainless humor - it's just really not something you get enough of for this type of movies. Something you Also don't get a lot of is portrayals of gay people which are older than like, 20, and actually had a decent life in a stable relationship. We need more movies like this, more normal movies which are not all striving to be High Art and talking about how being gay is a tragedy that will Ruin Your Life Forever. Not because those grim movies are not relatable - they ARE relatable for most lgbt people and that's the problem.

This is a cute movie that's just something random you can watch with a popcorn and not have an existential crisis over. So cheers to that and I'm hoping for more movies like this. Taking away the two stars for some cringy moments, and the "wait it's gay so someone has to die".