This is a quietly charming film filled with nice performances and an honest dignity that doesn't flinch from reality, yet avoids wallowing in the sensational. It tells a relatively wholesome tale about some sordid subjects and proves you can do that without seeming corny or fake.
John Buerlein (Jeremy Sisto) is a young Catholic priest who's brought a withered parish back to life. He's started up a homeless shelter and is a wonderful counselor to his congregation, whether it's the unwed mother railing against Church teachings about gender, the unemployed man struggling with sense of self, the gay teen coming to terms with his identity or the neighborhood busybody who thinks confession is a time to complain about her husband. What John isn't good at are the more public roles of the priest, particularly preaching and being a public figure in the community.
One day in confession, John hears some startling words from a beautiful woman (Kristin Chenoweth). She says she's a prostitute and that her upcoming birthday will be her last because she's going to kill herself. She slips away before John can do anything, but he can't stop thinking about her. This good man awkwardly plunges himself into the seedy underbelly of his city, searching for the woman to try and save her. The woman, named Linda, sets about tying up all the loose ends of her life. She cancels her newspaper subscription, says goodbye to all her "clients" and has a last talk with the stepfather who started raping her when she was 12. Will John be able to find Linda without becoming contaminated by the tawdry world she inhabits? Will he be able to say anything to dent her determination toward suicide? I encourage you to rent this DVD and find out.
I quite enjoyed Into Temptation. It's a rather reserved film, without any of the sturm and/or drang you might expect for this sort of story and neither vilifies the Catholic faith nor exploits the licentiousness of whoredom. This has all the makings of some cheap, melodramatic potboiler about a priest tormented into breaking his vows and the jezebel who comes between him and God, but Into Temptation is nothing like that. John Buerlein isn't tormented. He's a genuinely devout man who believes in the life he's chosen to lead. That doesn't mean he's some sort of goody two shoes, just that he tries to choose what is right over what is wrong. This movie is a little too racy to be for the whole family but in the way it directly confronts the conflicts of faith in an often faithless world, this film is like something you would show to Catholic teens (or young folk of any denomination) so they could see how their religion can flow through their lives and not simply be something they do on Sundays.
The story also draws some interesting parallels between the priest and the prostitute and not in an insulting or demeaning way. It makes you consider how they both live lonely lives because the things they do for others don't leave any room for themselves. The celibate priest and the hooker both keep the rest of the world at a distance. Their "jobs" require it.
There's some very nice and restrained acting on display here. There are no histrionics to either Jeremy Sisto's or Kristin Chenoweth's work. There is no scenery chewing or explosions of emotion. They both define their characters by what they don't do and their resolute way of not doing it. Chenoweth lets Linda's silence tell us about the unfathomable pain of a woman who's led a hard life and is worn down to the nub. Sisto gives John a polite strength. He's a man that may struggle to understand the right thing to do but once he does, he won't be turned away from doing it. Brian Baumgartner is wonderful and funny as a fellow priest who's a mentor to John. Father Ralph is very much John's opposite. He's much more comfortable and capable at the public role of the priesthood, but he uses humor and sarcasm to keep himself separate from the messy aspects of humanity that John is brave enough to embrace.
The only real complaint I could make about Into Temptation, outside of Chenoweth remaining clothed throughout the film, is that it's imbalanced. We get all of John's story, including a bit where his teenage girlfriend comes back to town and makes a drunken pass at him. It's handled more respectfully than such a thing normally is in entertainment, but it's unnecessary. However, the movie only gives us snippets of Linda's story. When she gives her confession at the start, we only hear a few lines and then the film skips over the rest. John hears Linda's story, but the audience never gets anything but the barest of details. That continues throughout Into Temptation, where we only get flashes of what Linda is doing. Chenoweth does an excellent job packing a lot of meaning into those brief scenes, which only increases the desire to see more. Instead of fully being a tale of two people, this is a movie about John with Linda is relegated to a compelling supporting character.
If you spend any time looking around a video store, you'll find an awful lot of movies you've never heard of. Most of them suck and suck hard. You've probably never heard of Into Temptation. But it's worth watching.
John Buerlein (Jeremy Sisto) is a young Catholic priest who's brought a withered parish back to life. He's started up a homeless shelter and is a wonderful counselor to his congregation, whether it's the unwed mother railing against Church teachings about gender, the unemployed man struggling with sense of self, the gay teen coming to terms with his identity or the neighborhood busybody who thinks confession is a time to complain about her husband. What John isn't good at are the more public roles of the priest, particularly preaching and being a public figure in the community.
One day in confession, John hears some startling words from a beautiful woman (Kristin Chenoweth). She says she's a prostitute and that her upcoming birthday will be her last because she's going to kill herself. She slips away before John can do anything, but he can't stop thinking about her. This good man awkwardly plunges himself into the seedy underbelly of his city, searching for the woman to try and save her. The woman, named Linda, sets about tying up all the loose ends of her life. She cancels her newspaper subscription, says goodbye to all her "clients" and has a last talk with the stepfather who started raping her when she was 12. Will John be able to find Linda without becoming contaminated by the tawdry world she inhabits? Will he be able to say anything to dent her determination toward suicide? I encourage you to rent this DVD and find out.
I quite enjoyed Into Temptation. It's a rather reserved film, without any of the sturm and/or drang you might expect for this sort of story and neither vilifies the Catholic faith nor exploits the licentiousness of whoredom. This has all the makings of some cheap, melodramatic potboiler about a priest tormented into breaking his vows and the jezebel who comes between him and God, but Into Temptation is nothing like that. John Buerlein isn't tormented. He's a genuinely devout man who believes in the life he's chosen to lead. That doesn't mean he's some sort of goody two shoes, just that he tries to choose what is right over what is wrong. This movie is a little too racy to be for the whole family but in the way it directly confronts the conflicts of faith in an often faithless world, this film is like something you would show to Catholic teens (or young folk of any denomination) so they could see how their religion can flow through their lives and not simply be something they do on Sundays.
The story also draws some interesting parallels between the priest and the prostitute and not in an insulting or demeaning way. It makes you consider how they both live lonely lives because the things they do for others don't leave any room for themselves. The celibate priest and the hooker both keep the rest of the world at a distance. Their "jobs" require it.
There's some very nice and restrained acting on display here. There are no histrionics to either Jeremy Sisto's or Kristin Chenoweth's work. There is no scenery chewing or explosions of emotion. They both define their characters by what they don't do and their resolute way of not doing it. Chenoweth lets Linda's silence tell us about the unfathomable pain of a woman who's led a hard life and is worn down to the nub. Sisto gives John a polite strength. He's a man that may struggle to understand the right thing to do but once he does, he won't be turned away from doing it. Brian Baumgartner is wonderful and funny as a fellow priest who's a mentor to John. Father Ralph is very much John's opposite. He's much more comfortable and capable at the public role of the priesthood, but he uses humor and sarcasm to keep himself separate from the messy aspects of humanity that John is brave enough to embrace.
The only real complaint I could make about Into Temptation, outside of Chenoweth remaining clothed throughout the film, is that it's imbalanced. We get all of John's story, including a bit where his teenage girlfriend comes back to town and makes a drunken pass at him. It's handled more respectfully than such a thing normally is in entertainment, but it's unnecessary. However, the movie only gives us snippets of Linda's story. When she gives her confession at the start, we only hear a few lines and then the film skips over the rest. John hears Linda's story, but the audience never gets anything but the barest of details. That continues throughout Into Temptation, where we only get flashes of what Linda is doing. Chenoweth does an excellent job packing a lot of meaning into those brief scenes, which only increases the desire to see more. Instead of fully being a tale of two people, this is a movie about John with Linda is relegated to a compelling supporting character.
If you spend any time looking around a video store, you'll find an awful lot of movies you've never heard of. Most of them suck and suck hard. You've probably never heard of Into Temptation. But it's worth watching.
