Le Jour où tu as choisi la vie

It probably wouldn't be fair to just trash this film out of hand. There will doubtless be many who find the pro-life message it emphasises life-affirming. As a piece of cinema, though, it is a shockingly simplistic and one-sided attempt to suggest to young women facing that most difficult of decisions that all in the garden is ridiculously rosy! We start with "David" (the easy on the Raphael Ruggero) whom we discover has been adopted by the Christian (that's important) Colton family - "Jimmy" (Kirk Cameron) and "Susan" (Rebecca Rogers). They live a happy life with the young man a keen wrestler about to go on to college. Sadly, though, injury befalls him and after surgery to relieve pressure on his brain - the recovery from which would put Lazarus to shame - he has to rethink his plans. Meantime, his birth mother realises that he is now eighteen and so attempts to get in touch. The rest of this rather sentimentally cheesy drama follows a slightly nauseating path, I found, aided unhelpfully by his rather irritating mate "Nate" (Justin Sterner) who insisted on filming everything on his phone - even some of the most sensitive and personal moments as the story evolves with an almost menacing degree of indoctrinating pontification - subtle, yes - as an air raid! The acting, especially from the adults, is twee and pedestrian in the extreme with adulation and fawning galore as we plod along towards an ending that I found supremely condescending. This is at best, a mediocre television movie that should only be shown in cinemas with a warning that it completely lacks any sense of balance. The soundtrack is also banal - plinky plonky piano chords just to reinforce the gloopiness. I didn't hate it. Cameron et al are entitled to their point of view, but if this is supposed to be in any way educational or realistic, then I'm Tom Thumb!

This movie won't be pulling in any acting awards in the near or far future but for a lazy day of mindless tv watching it was fine, even heartwarming. That is until its alternative motives were made clear. I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention to see where it was going. The end got super preachy with an anti-abortion chaser that discussed none of the nuances that may come into play when women make the decision to abort. As a woman and an adoptee I was low-key offended by the simplistic adoption vs abortion binary they drew in this movie.

The last quarter of the movie was disappointing and infuriating in turns which colored my overall perspective in a negative way.

The plot of this film has been done a few dozen times before. Sometimes, the subject matter has been handled sensitively, and most other times the subject matter was handled shabbily. The old story of the birth mother wanting to reunite with the child who has been adopted can easily fall into the cornball acting syndrome. Fortunately for this film and its actors, it does not. The script is intelligent, the actors are believable, and the situation is handled in a sensitive manner. All of these good variables make this an easy decision to recommend this film to the public. The only reservation I have about the film is its overreliance on religion.

This movie could have been so much better:

• if it was written better. Too many teary moments...not very realistic.

• if it didn't keep referring to God so often. Seems like everyone in the movie was into God and praising God. Not very realistic.

• if David's friend didn't have his iPhone in everyone's face, recording everything, and no one complaining about it. Not very realistic.

I could go on, but basically the movie is for God loving people who see no wrong in anything anyone does. Not very realistic.

The movie could have been so much better if the above wasn't in it. Maybe they should have implemented the KISS principle (keep it simple silly) when they made this movie?

PROS

+ Great production quality and great actors.

+ The movie is very great in removing many psychological barriers. This implies the barrier for reconciliation after a very long time and distance, and especially to consider adoption instead of murder.

+ No problematic language or violence.

CONS

• A mix between superficiality, matched clothing styles and super-emotionalism.

• While the movie is very pleasant to watch and carries a very great message, it is far away from the Good Message of IESOUS CHRISTOS.

We can certainly all agree that adoption is a considerable alternative, but have to ask ourselves if this is the plan A of the Bible, especially given the fact of its complete absence from it. Yes, it is true that not everything is stipulated in the Bible, but could we come to the same quintessence of the movie, specifically of David's advise to his sister, to simply think it over again based on his example?

This culmination of the movie in this worldly advise is problematic. It is one thing what David experienced in the past, but a whole other thing what he now makes out of that knowledge. He presented his sister literally the Good Message of his upbringing, but how much more important would it have been to present her not just a plan B, but the Good Message of IESOUS CHRISTOS, which would include to first follow Him instead of her brother?

Without CHRISTOS she might eventually make the right decision, but it would rather be a product of chance if this would not result in a mother-child relationship, but also father-mother-child family.

What is presented here is beautiful, but if such an extreme situation of life is not being used in order to present the Good Message, then where should THEOS be allowed to work? This is the very tragic failure of the movie. It presented a plan B and laid it wonderfully out, but apart from some Christian undertones, the movie never proposed the wonderful plan A anywhere.

• The credits include the following:

St. Luke Methodist Church

St. Mark United Methodist Church

Grace Presbyterian Highland Community Church (Calvinist)

Focus on the Family

March for Life.