At Home with Gordo & Cynnie

Noticed this on cable last night and wasn't sure I was going to watch the entire film; there was another movie starting in about half an hour that I was thinking of switching to...but by the time the reminder for that film came on my screen, I knew I was in for the duration.

"Praise" lures you in with the shockingly gnarly realism of its sex-crazed female protagonist Cynthia, portrayed with beyond-fearless, jaw-dropping commitment by Sacha Horler. Cynthia is RAW, literally, and she lives for only one thing: physical pleasure. She's an animal, basically, an primal being totally devoid of any domestication, a wildebeast in perpetual heat, and our 'hero' Gordon is both repulsed and attracted (as we are) by Cynthia's blatancy: she's everything he's not, and eventually he submits to her warped energy, her whirlwind of over-indulgence (and of course her sexuality), and for a short while his life has meaning.

You realize going in that this film will not turn into yer basic "and-they-lived-happily-ever-after" number, so we're not surprised when -=- MINOR SPOILER -=- Gordo finally has had enough; this damsel of the deranged has literally drained him dry and he has to cut her loose. The most poignant part of the movie, for me, takes place at the end, when, quite simply, Cynthia isn't there anymore, and we feel her absence just as profoundly as Gordon does.