Review of "Redeeming Love" from a Christian's Perspective
This past weekend my husband and I went to go see the movie Redeeming Love.
Now, I’m not going to lie… my inner 15-year-old self was jumping for joy at the mere fact that one of my all time favorite books actually became a movie. This is the stuff of dreams!
With that excitement also came a great deal of hesitation. Questions like these ran through my head: Will the movie do the story justice? The book was very graphic… how are they going to communicate the seriousness of Angel’s sexual abuse without an R rating? Will the parallels to Christ’s unconditional, unshakable love for us come across through the movie as strongly as it did with the book?
Watching the trailer for the third time convinced me that the story would be powerful, even if the original message became muddied.
Trigger Warning: Redeeming Love is a story that involves heavy sexual and physical abuse. If these topics are triggering to you, please be cautious and guard your heart before diving in too deeply.
What the film is not
Before heading into the details of the story, I want to take a moment to establish what the film is NOT:
It is not appropriate for the whole family
It is not sugar-coating sexual abuse
It is not free of sex scenes (although the only sex scenes it contains are between a consenting husband and wife)
I read a few harsh comments on another Christian blog saying that the film was “leading lambs to the slaughter” by containing such heavy sexual content. But, I think there’s a huge difference between condoning sexual immorality and exposing sexual immorality. The story exposes it by creatively re-telling the biblical story of Hosea — there’s a reason why God himself chose to use the story of a prostitute to create a powerful metaphor.
The story of Hosea
The basic premise of Redeeming Love is based on the biblical story of Hosea. Many years ago God instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute named Gomer. Hosea obeys and brings her home. But her old way of life calls her back, and she leaves him. But Hosea’s love toward Gomer is unconditional, and he goes time and again to bring her home.
God instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute in order to parallel his relationship with Israel. While God loves Israel and chases after her relentlessly, Israel is unfaithful and falls back into old patterns… even after being offered safety and deliverance.
Brief summary of Redeeming Love (contains spoilers!)
Franchine Rivers mirrors the biblical story of Hosea within the historic period of the 1850s California Gold Rush.
Chronologically, the story starts off in New England with a young girl named Sarah (played by Abigail Cowen). Sarah was born illegitimately to her mother, Mae (played by Nina Dobrev) and her biological father wants nothing to do with either of them. He eventually withdraws his financial support, leaving Mae in an incredibly vulnerable position. After selling everything she owns, Mae resorts to prostitution… but then quickly falls ill and dies when Sarah is eight years old.
Sarah is left in the care of a drunk, lowlife man who immediately sells her into prostitution. She is then raised in a cruel world and sexually abused by a pedophile named Duke (played by Eric Dane). Duke names her Angel while she’s there, and she doesn’t speak her true name to another soul after that moment. After 10 years of this terrible existence, she eventually escapes and boards a ship bound to California. On the ship itself, she works as a prostitute, knowing that if she didn’t she would be raped by the mostly male crew.
When she arrives at “Pair-A-Dice” California, she falls under the care of Duchess (played by Famke Janssen). Duchess runs the largest brothel in town called “The Palace” and there, Angel becomes incredibly well-known by hoards of obsessed, lustful gold diggers. Everyone in the town knows who Angel is, including a lowly farmer named Michael Hosea (played by Tom Lewis).
Michael was praying that God would give him a wife and he finds himself immediately drawn to Angel. In order to get to know her, he pays premium… but uses the time to try to convince her to leave her current life. Angel is cold and calloused through years of abuse and she resists opening up to him. Eventually, she accepts Michael’s marriage proposal after he finds her beaten and bloodied by one of Duchess’s henchmen.
She comes to live with Michael but is hesitant to accept his love. She intends to “pay him back what she owes him” and then return to the Duchess to demand her rightful money is returned.
This is where the back-and-forth comes in… Angel uses Michael’s brother-in-law, Paul, to bring her back to town and pays the currency he demands: her body. She finds The Palace burnt to the ground, Duchess no where to be seen, and starts working again as a prostitute above a local bar. A furious Michael goes in and fights his way out of the bar with her.
Michael wrestles with his hurt and anger at her unfaithfulness and Angel starts to become incredibly fond of him (a strange and foreign feeling for her after years of abuse by countless men). As her love for him grows, she reveals that she can never give Michael the family he desires. Twice she became pregnant under Duke’s care and twice Duke aborted the baby, “making sure the second time that it would never happen again.” This hard reality, mixed with her growing love for Michael, caused her to run away again.
In the book, she runs away three times: once to Pair-A-Dice, once to Sacramento, and once to San Francisco. But the movie shrinks the timeline slightly for brevity’s sake.
While in San Francisco, Angel finds herself working honestly for the first time in her life. But she encounters an old villain: Duke. He steals her away and wants her to start working as a prostitute again, making her depute back on stage in front of a crowd of men who she’s meant to entertain. Although the book and the movie go about this section in slightly different ways, the end is the same: she exposes Duke’s “fondness for little girls,”: rescues two girls from the house, and starts a shelter for others like her who are trying to make a new life for themselves.
Meanwhile, her brother-in-law Paul (who has undergone a huge personal transformation), goes to find her in San Francisco. Angel is convinced that Michael would’ve remarried in the three years they spent apart, but after learning from Paul that he was still waiting for her, she returns back to him.
The story ends with their blissful re-uniting and Angel revealing her true name to Michael. Years later, God gives them four children and a happy, honest life together.
Is it worth watching? Well, it depends…
Now that we’ve covered the story thoroughly, my answer to whether or not the movie is “worth seeing” is slightly different depending on where you’re coming from…
If you’re a Christian and you’ve read the book: 100% yes! Go see it. It will not disappoint. It’s so, so similar to the book and it’s so satisfying to watch the characters come to life in such raw, authentic, and compelling ways. The cast and the producers did an excellent job.
If you’re a Christian and you have not read the book: For mature, adult Christians — I think it’s absolutely worth watching. My only caveat is that you should research the story and the intended biblical parallel beforehand. This will help you appreciate the depth of Christ’s love and realize the dark lens through which the story is being told. This should give some space to discern if it’s going to be an effective story for you personally to experience.
If you hold another faith and are unfamiliar with the story: It’s a great movie! But bare in mind that it was written in a religious context. There are faith-based themes woven through the thread of the story and they may seem strange from the outside looking in. The purpose of the plot is to serve as a powerful metaphor, so it will march to a different drum than a secular film. But regardless of your faith foundation, it does expose hard realities of the world that I think everyone should open their eyes to see. Everything the movie depicts is happening right now, today, somewhere in the world… abuse of women, children, and vulnerable people groups. It’s up to us to peak “behind the curtain” and discover what’s really going on, not turn a blind eye because it’s too hard to look at.
Final thoughts
Redeeming Love is a powerful and emotional movie. I walked out of the theater full of gratitude… grateful for a God who loves me enough to pursue me relentlessly, no matter how many times I fall back into old, harmful patterns… grateful for a husband who loves me so richly and who fiercely and strongly protects me… grateful for men in my life who are full of good character and strong convictions like my dad, dad-in-law, brothers, brothers-in-law, grandpas, uncles, and friends… and I’m grateful for all that I have.
All in all, I’m so happy with how the movie turned out. I’m really hoping the “Mark of the Lion” trilogy will be next, because I would be thrilled to see another one of Francine River’s stories on the big screen.
But what about you? Do you have any thoughts on Redeeming Love after seeing the film? How did it compare to your expectations? Feel free to chat in the comments below!
