“Down east”, as they say in Canada, on 6December1917 two ships, one loaded with high explosives, collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia with the resulting explosion killing 1,782 people and injuring an estimated 9,000.
In the film “Sweet Angel Baby” filmed down east in Newfoundland and Labrador a massive explosion occurs but a moral one, not physical.
Eliza (Michaela Kurminsky) has a secret life as a social media photographer with close to 70,000 followers enjoying her racy photo’s whether they show her rubbing her half naked body with homemade preserves or flashing herself nestled in between a moose head. She does her best to conceal her identity but carelessness definitively blows her cover.
Eliza is an in the closet lesbian enjoying the company of town lesbian Toni (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers).
Eliza fornicates avoidance style with blackmailer Sean who “promises” to keep her on-line photos covert otherwise he would blow her cover.
Eliza lives in small town Newfoundland apparently a good churchgoing restaurant manager. Gossip is deadly in such a small town and the sordidness of her on-line “perversion” explodes causing moral casualties. Despite the town’s Roman Catholic priest exhorting parishioners with kindness, compassion, humility and forgiveness in his sermon the worldly overtakes spirituality and the gunpowder of morality spews all about.
Despite quiet Newfoundland expounded in so many Newfoundland and Labrador tourism commercials in “Sweet Angel Baby” expect treachery, blackmail, steamy sex, scandal, residential school mentions, hypocrisy, pride and most importantly DEFIANCE.
There is no need to cancel your Newfoundland and Labrador tourism vacation plans. Unique for its physical beauty its inhabitants may be no different than in the rest of Canada.
Written and directed by Melanie Oates.
Theatrical release in Canada 15August2025.
RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film Rating 93/100.
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