Purely Joyful Movie!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

For whatever reason, there is a whole subgenre of "lesbian" films about gay women falling in love with married women/women in relationships with men. This movie is no departure, and ends up being very cliché. The acting is fine, but no character is likable at all. The script makes "Joey" seem wooden, and "Rayna" as flighty and superficial. Have we seen this before? Yes. Does it put a different spin on the old cliché? No, unless you think backwoods Pennsylvania makes things more worthwhile for a love story.The story is set in a small hick town in Pennsylvania, where Rayna is worried about appearances (and can't look gay), yet women seem to give each other bedroom eyes regularly, and every where you go in this movie, there's no shortage of lesbians ready to flirt and get it on after a few quick words. This is supposed to be realistic? It's far from it. Joey and Rayna get together pretty quickly, and as I said, it adds to the unreality of the movie. What is realistic is Joey's youth, idealism, and lack of long term planning, and that complicates things, as well as Rayna's "one-foot-out-the-door" mentality. But ultimately, this movie is hollow and devoid of deeper meaning, and again, falls into similar trappings of many other movies.There's nothing redeeming about this film, and it repeats all of the expected clichés, leaving you feeling irritated and annoyed that you wasted your time on another take on the same theme. This kind of plot is far too overdone in so-called lesbian films....don't we deserve better?

Okay, when I watched this movie THEN saw that it had 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, I thought surely I slipped into an alternate universe...then I realized only 6 people reviewed the movie. I'm going to assume those 6 are either related to the actors/writers OR they have been kept in an underground bunker since birth, devoid of human contact and without concept of language beyond guttural sounds and hand gestures. In a nutshell, this movie sucked at all levels..the acting...the story...the direction...the ending...the dialogue. I could go on. About the only thing that kept my interest was my discomfort with the cleanliness of mobile home and Reyna's unkempt hair. There was nothing "artistic" about this movie, in fact, I've watched people grab their luggage off a baggage carousel with more enthusiasm. BOO!

AWOL is such an honest film, that when you watch it you effortlessly breathe and feel with its main characters. This is due to director Deb Shoval's remarkable ability to submerge you in a small Pennsylvania coal town, and to actresses Lola Kirke's and Breeda Wool's fearless performances as Joey and Rayna. It is an intimate look at the lives of those who don't often grace the silver screen: soldier recruits, wives, closeted lesbians, and rural American families. AWOL is poignant, guarded, raw- like Joey and Rayna's relationship. Watching it will make you more compassionate, more understanding, and somehow more human.

From the opening shot, AWOL draws you in to its landscape of people, place and passion. Kirke and Wool, working with a backdrop of economic and personal distress, use their characters to paint a picture of the interrelated challenges of life and love. Director Shoval commits to the authenticity of her characters, allowing the story to unfold without compromise.