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It’s the 1980s and a 13-year-old girl who talks to God returns from summer camp to find her home for sale — no, this isn’t an update on “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” But “Purgatory,” directed by Lindsay Lanzillotta and written by Christine Speer, seems to have taken cues from Judy Blume’s novel and its 2023 film adaptation. Decked out in a Halloween-costume version of the ‘80s, this plodding but amiable coming-of-age might be more precisely called a coming-of-agnostic: the tale of a Catholic teenager whose pubescent growing pains shake her faith in the things she once held sacred.
For Beatrice Gravel (Ruby McGurrin), those articles of faith are not only religious but also familial. After she and her younger sister, Chloe (Lauren MacRae), return from camp — a religious sleepaway called Camp Many Fishes — their parents sit them down for a family discussion. They will be selling the house and separating, they gently inform them, with Beatrice’s mother, Marianne (Abby Elliott), moving out of the family home to self-actualize.
The rest of the movie tracks Bea — as her friends and family call her — as she grudgingly comes to terms with her new reality. She laments her situation in confession with her priest, Father Malone (J.K. Simmons, a great asset to the movie), and in the cafeteria alongside her friends, Nigel (Marcus Ngo) and Margot (Gemma Rosaria Rae). The pals support Bea, and are fellow late bloomers; Nigel enjoys gossiping but recoils at the thought of basement make-out parties. When a cute boy catches Margot’s eye, Bea is unmoved; crushes have yet to register on even the furthest reaches of her radar.
Additional minor dramas unfold on the home front. Without Marianne to cook and clean, Bea’s dad, Joe (John Reynolds), briefly morphs into a tired take on Mr. Mom, burning fish fingers in the oven and leaving the house a mess. And despite her vehemence about needing space, Marianne hardly disappears; she seems as present as ever, handling school chauffeur duties and frequently dropping by the house to check in. Bea is vocally repulsed to notice a flirtation develop between her mom and the school principal, Mr. Thompson (Jack Innanen), but the mother-daughter confrontations that ensue register more as passing friction than mounting conflict.
Which brings us to a central issue with “Purgatory”: Nothing much builds. Ostensibly a family comedy, the movie ultimately comes across as little more than a collection of awkward encounters. Without notable insights, unexpected scenarios or memorable humor, the whole thing tends to drag. Its lowest-common-denominator comedy is encapsulated by one scene in which a volunteer safety official makes a presentation to fearmonger about stranger danger. “How do you stop from getting murdered, kidnapped or dismembered, or worse?” he warns, sending the auditorium into a panic.
Such sitcom moments punctuate a smattering of stock coming-of-age scenes. In one, Bea practices kissing with a pillow to prepare for a game of spin the bottle. Later, she visits the VHS rental store to check out “The Parent Trap” as research for scheming her own family back together. Amid the boilerplate beats, the presence of Chloe offers some freshness; the little sister character serves as both an admiring audience for Bea’s antics and a tug on her conscience when Bea’s preoccupations become too self-involved.
The movie’s best scenes are those that plow through the clichés to excavate something deeper and weirder about being a teenager: its injustice. One occurs when Joe has a midday date and hires Margot’s older sister, Jennifer (Nicole Redmond), to babysit. Previously prim and puritanical, Jennifer arrives to reveal that she has discovered a wild side. She smokes a cigarette indoors, then drags Bea and Chloe to meet up with her boyfriend. The outing — which culminates with Jennifer urging Bea to shoplift a nail polish from the convenience store — evocatively captures one of the deep indignities of youth: suffering consequences at the hands of adults even when you know, with absolute certainty, that you’re not the one to blame.
The movie’s Catholic title refers to the liminal realm where souls atone for their sins, and with a divorce looming, Bea imagines herself stranded in this limbo, dreading the hell of a broken family while yearning for some form of salvation. There is indignity in that, too: Bea didn’t choose to be the child of separated adults, and as members of their community — including a gaggle of employees at Bea’s Catholic school — cast aspersions on the Gravels, the movie shows how the shame of her parents’ separation follows her around, turning a private rupture into a public sin.
It’s a potent predicament, and one that might have been resonated more deeply had the movie allowed clearer access to Marianne. Elliott, in a blowout and blue eyeshadow, plays Bea’s mother with a pained expression that’s meant to be a window into the difficulty of her decision. But in hewing closely to Bea’s point of view, the movie never lets us much further beneath Marianne’s surface. Scene after scene, she remains more of an enigma than a woman we’re invited to understand, and the few psychological tidbits we do receive fail to coalesce into anything more than fuzzy picture of general wifely malaise.
That emotional haziness appears in other parts of the movie, too. Take the school Christmas play: Though the movie repeatedly emphasizes its importance to her, the auditions — which result in a disappointing outcome for Bea — come and go with barely any fanfare. Where’s the bitterness? The upset? The heartbreak? The sequence’s anticlimax is characteristic of the movie as a whole: charming enough, but never quite as affecting as it ought to be.
Grade: C+
“Purgatory” premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
English (US) ·