WHEN NIGHT IS FALLING (Patricia Rozema, 1995)

A teacher of mythology at a conservative Christian college, engaged to marry a fellow teacher at the school, is drawn into an unanticipated lesbian relationship with a circus acrobat. When the dust settles, she forsakes the guy for the gal. The light of love thus wins out over homophobic Christianity’s darkness.
     Uneventful would be a good word to describe the tone, the subdued attitude, of When Night Is Falling, a Canadian film written and directed by Patricia Rozema (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, 1987). The pervasive sense of uneventfulness is deliberate; for Rozema, it is no big deal that a woman should leave a man for another woman, no matter how bigoted elements in society, here represented by the ridiculous school chaplain, feel. Rozema refuses to make her film a reaction to anticipated responses from the dark side. When night is falling, one should do more than assuage loneliness; one should choose love.
     This film refreshes. The two women, Camille and Petra, have other differences between them apart from their initial sexual orientations. (The film makes effortlessly clear that Camille’s Christian training made it unthinkable for her to consider any lesbian component to her personality prior to Petra’s tenderly pressing the matter.) Camille, who is Québecois, is a grown woman, while Petra is, really, a girl. Camille is caucasian; Petra, racially mixed. Camille is timid, cautious—and not only in the sexual arena; Petra, adventurous. Gentle, patient, Petra’s drawing her out of her shell helps Camille to fall in love with this new friend of hers.
     Pascale Bussières, whom I named best supporting actress for Emporte-Moi (Léa Pool, 1999), plays Camille—perhaps because of Camille’s reticence, somewhat irritatingly. Rachael Crawford, as Petra, is gorgeous, resembling a cross between Shelley Duvall and Angelina Jolie.