2.5 out of 5

This was a weird one, but not in a Cronenberg way. Personal sidebar: a close friend wants to start going to church. This is not someone who myself, nor any of our mutual friends, thought they would do, but we support their decision. One suggested that they try out different denominations, because if it were up to my friend, they would just continue going to the closest church in walking distance for the sermons and leave at the worship. This particular church’s worship is singing, but it’s different with each and in turn the religion they promote.

While it would be easy for viewers without faith or theological interest to see the speaking-in-tongues and sacred treatment at play in “The Front Room” as ‘crazy’ behaviour, this dramatic revery is typical of Pentecostalism. However, the film doesn’t say this, and while a dichotomy could have existed between Brandy’s Belinda’s study of the Goddess versus the veneration of Kathryn Hunter’s Solange, the central conflict is very vanilla due to this lack of contextualization. On one end it’s problematic, as audiences on the outside shouldn’t be put in a situation where they assume the worst about a belief without all the facts.

On the other end, without seeing Solange as the enemy, there’s no conflict, and ergo no movie. And Front Room would be far different if it didn’t suggest a kind of spiritual deviancy at play, and just concentrated on Solange’s incontinence.

Yes, there is lots of poop and pee in the movie. Front Room seems content hopping genres so I wasn’t sure whether to take this ‘scatalogiquement’ seriously but – having cared for the elderly myself before – it’s no laughing matter when they’re in bed all day, refusing to wear a diaper & covered in C.diff. Front Room puts this front-and-centre, and I have to give props to a film that pans down to surprise diarrhea like Larry Clark to heavy petting, or that properly pays off a shot of a toilet in a care montage, or that brings out those rarely-used squishy sound effects. Speaking of cinematography, the film does look really nice overall, with a dinner scene that jumps the 180 rule most brazenly & a slow zoom-in to a mirror standing out the most.

But audiences will leave remembering the acting, the prominent theremin on the bizarre soundtrack, and the diarrhea.