| A Canadian, indigenous, female-led, queer love story. That alone should help guide the right audience into theater seats. Any individual one of those descriptors is unique enough for a film trying to make into theaters, but combining all of them puts it in very rare and lonely company. Blood Lines is the sophomore feature from Métis writer-director Gail Maurice. She has described it as very personal and a labour of love, pouring a lot of her past and identity into these characters. | | 2025
Directed by: Gail Maurice
Screenplay by: Gail Maurice
Starring: Dana Solomon, Derica Lafrance
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The film opens on Beatrice (Dana Solomon), a young woman in an indigenous community who has situated herself into the very heart of the community: working as a general store and gas station clerk and as a writer/reporter for the community paper, and interacting with the town elders, aka The Grannies, despite having a very fractured relationship with her own mother, Leonore (an alcoholic with a shady past and a general inability to be a decent mother).
Then walks in Chani (Derica Lafrance), a young woman, raised by a white family in the city, but is now looking to find out where she came from; she thinks her mother is a Métis woman from this community but she doesn’t know much else. Beatrice quickly jumps at the chance to help her, for exactly two reasons: one, there are only so many young queer women in this town (as in none) and Chani is beautiful; and two, she can put her journalism and reporting skills to good use and help Chani find her birth family and heritage.
When the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, they tried to play up the mystery angle. Who is Chani, and what big secret is going to get revealed? That’s what made me purchase my ticket. But that side of the story isn’t written very well, there’s some weird pacing and a predictable ending that just doesn’t sit right. The part of the film that has people talking is the romance. The two lead actresses have fantastic chemistry, and all of the early scenes developing and connecting Beatrice and Chani are both well written and filmed with a soft warmth which makes it feel comfortable and inviting.
Blood Lines explores themes of love, family, mother-daughter bonds, and leaning on a community when you can’t lean on your family. The film’s concern for a family identity feels a little over-wrought and hokey, and it’s a tough balance with the romance storyline. However, it’s clear that this film was made to be as authentic as possible. The town’s Grannies (who all made it out to the film’s premiere) are exactly as depicted; and the casting of the leads is especially well-done. Derica Lafrance is half-white/half-Metis exactly like Chani and has experienced the exact same outsider emotions as her character goes through in the film.
This is an independent, unpolished production and won’t have mass appeal; however, it holds such a unique, underseen section of the film landscape that the right audience should see it and will be moved by it.
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