After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

In this day and age, more than two decades later, we've become more tolerant, and looking back, why the big deal about two women together? What's so unacceptable about that? What's wrong? As long as two people love, let them live in love, the world needs more of that. I don't think two women in love have anything to hide. I think a heterosexual girl is very, very likely to land in far more 'shameful situations' than her counterpart. I mean, two girls together, what do they get up to? A bit of inventive fun, harmless, and it's generally quite wholesome to look at. Like in this movie. I see nothing to be ashamed of. Not in their sexual activity.As for the movie itself, bit of a different story, I'm sorry to say. I felt like "hoo boy, I didn't pick a winner, geesh, this is going along dreary, it's not like the stuff I normally watch." I knew from the start that it was Canadian, I checked out the trailer on VuClip, I placed the order, but as the moment arrived, I had a feeling "don't expect too much..." and, no, I really didn't get too much. The whole thing is kind of staid in places, the sapphic love scenes are beautiful but not really exceptional, there was no real spark, it lacked any real excitement. The big NC-17 rating makes it sound like porno material. It's very far from that. Very far. It's kind of wholesome. It's just two people in love, some naked smooching. Come on, what's the big deal? Certainly, not this movie.{I was going to call my review "a dog in the refrigerator" inspired by this movie being so different from my usual fare, but that looked so horrid for such a sweet movie. But it was a very uplifting moment when ol' Bob the dog crawled out of the snow grave. Liked that!}

Camille Baker (Pascale Bussières) and boyfriend Martin (Henry Czerny) are fellow professors at a Christian university. Martin could get a coveted promotion but they can't continue to live in sin. She's devastated by her dog's death. Circus acrobat Petra (Rachael Crawford) sees her breakdown at the laundromat and comforts her. They become friends and eventually even more.Camille is probably not conservative enough at the start. She's ill-fitting at the university. By starting her off as a liberated woman, her journey isn't as far or as dramatic as it needs to be. The style is rather bland. The idea of a circus in an industrial space could have been amazing. Overall, the movie is too slow and there isn't enough drama. It tries to be artistic which only drains the movie of any inherent tension.

Pascale Bussieres, a Quebecois actress makes her English- speaking debut, as Camille, a teacher at a Christian college that has never let loose.She is crying in a laundromat after losing her dog, when she meets Petra (Rachael Crawford), a circus performer. Showing up at the circus to deliver laundry that Petra left behind, Camille enters a world of fantasy that she has never experienced.Canadian film maker Patricia Rozema (Kit Kittredge: An American Girl) gives us a strangely surreal world in which freedom and change battles repression and conformity.The film was given an NC-17 rating, ostensibly for the lesbian sex scenes, and this affected the ratings given by some reviewers, but the heterosexual scene with Camille's fiancée was much more graphic. The lesbian scenes are tastefully done in a soft focus and very beautiful.Everyone dreams of running off to join the circus at one time or another. In this case, it is a metaphor for being who you truly are. It takes courage, and we wonder whether or not Camille possesses that courage.A gloriously beautiful film with a marvelous love story.

Pretty average film, the lead seems like quite a decent actress, shame that her love interest was so wooden. There were attempts to make some sort of religious points but they never seemed to lead anywhere, the plot is basic and shallow. The carnival elements were really campy but served their main purpose so far that they contrasted with the lifestyle of Camille. I thought it was a made for TV movie to be honest but it looks like it is supposed to be an art house film.The best thing about this film ?, there is an absolutely hilarious payoff at the end (although I am sure it was not intended to be funny by the film maker).