This Time (2024)

-Written by Kyle Bain.

2024 ONE FLUID NIGHT LGBTQIA+ FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW! 

When a closested sixteen-year-old, Grace (Anwen O’Driscoll), is told that she will be attending a conversion camp, she decides, out of desperation, that she will drive to Los Angeles to find herself and escape the life that currently imprisons her. Currently dealing with the loss of her estranged father, she’s joined by Red (Charles Martin Smith), a man with his own issues. This Time around Grace is determined to get her life on track, and nothing will stand in her way. 

In my trek through the world of cinema I have come to find that films that address anything to do with the LGBTQIA+ community tend to be very direct–rarely veiling anything and sometimes even becoming aggressive as a result. When a filmmaker chooses to be in your face, overly aggressive, those films tend to be lost on me–and I struggle to appreciate even the positive aspects of them. This Time is different, as Writer Allie Jennings and Director Robert Vaughn are aware of the fact that they need to expand their audience, that they have to appeal to more than just the LGBTQIA+ community. They do a great job of this, incorporating ideas and struggles into This Time that everyone can relate to. 

In the early stages of This Time, I felt that I was going to be subjected to a film that appeared to have a purpose and a direction, but was destined to become lost on its journey. Some of the acting is a bit overdone, the scenarios unnatural, and the film as a whole took a hit as a result. I was worried that This Time had failed before it even got going–but around the start of the second act, the one which is home to the relationship between Red and Grace, the tone and the style of the film begin to shift. Sure, there are still some moments that are over exaggerated, that don’t necessarily remain as grounded as they needed to be–but they ultimately become drowned out by the very real intensity that exists through the majority of the film. 

What Jennings and Vaughn do to juxtapose the initially extreme nature of This Time is create a unique simplicity that is sometimes hard to find in film. Once we’ve moved past those unnatural moments Vaughn does a wonderful job of immersing us in a very real world, with a series of relatable and accessible situations. 

This Time possesses some of the same characteristics as those overdone and overused Hallmark films, but most of that exists in the early going–subsiding by the start of the second act. As the film moves forward, becoming more relatable as it goes on, I did find myself connecting with the characters on screen, with their faults, with their strengths, etc. This Time does well grounding itself as it progresses, and by the end I was happy with the finished product. This Time is effective in regard to the technical aspects, doing enough to support its narrative, but not doing so much as to overshadow it or wow viewers. 

Directed by Robert Vaughn. 

Written by Allie Jennings. 

Starring Anwen O’Driscoll, Charles Martin Smith, Deborah Cox, Sergio Di Zio, Jennifer Gibson, Erica Durance, etc. 

6.5/10 = WATCH IT FOR FREE