Kayla’s before story comes in the form of oversized Daddy (Michael Mayes). Glory! Glory! he sings in her remembered moments, as bluegrass notes swell the score. He bends backwards as the spirit seizes him, signaled by percussion at a gallop. Mayes has a magnetism that pierces a camera’s distance, in this reviewer’s opinion—a force of nature that seems typecast for his role. Into the electric sway of his booming voice and the music swell, comes his wife Nelda (Leah Dexter) who speaks in tongues operatic style, her powerful trained voice giving us a studied frenzy spotted with feral spicing. Meanwhile, the projected images show us the snakes that this Pentecostal Church flirts with to show their devotion to God and unwavering faith in God’s will.
The story moves from parking lot, to bus ride, to Daddy’s hospital bed, where he lies in a near-death coma after succumbing to a snake bite. Mostly though, the story lives in the Kayla’s past where we gradually piece together her close bond with Daddy before he was saved and after. No champion of women’s equality he—Kayla had to reconcile that Daddy dismisses her as weak as woman -weak as Eve- same-same.
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You won’t feel like you are watching a film or TV show, but there are many cinematic flourishes enriching the experience. Film clips show us a young Kayla as the libretto sings of memories. The camera snakes through snake skins. Three singers in closeups bring us the clamor of the bus ride home, reminding us what the word zoom really meant before it became a noun.
