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"Grace"

by Lauren James on August 20, 2025

Summer comes to an end.

Natalie Jasmine Harris’s “Grace” is a short film shot through with sensual observation.

The titular character, played by Jordan Wells, is nearing the end of her summer down South, at her grandfather’s beautiful old home. There will be another summer, but teenage Grace experiences this one like it’s all she has, and cinematographer Tehillah De Castro shoots it that way. The world is full of light that has its own weight, like golden syrup. The images are specific and lovingly framed, like Grace is committing them to memory in real time. Soon, the film shows that she has reason to.

Grace is about to be baptized. Again, apparently—what, she asks teasingly, like the first one didn’t take? Big Mama (C.L. Simpson) shuts her down: even this mild line of questioning has no place in her grandparents’ house.

But Grace and her sister (Mikayla Lasahe Bartholomew) weren’t raised with any particular exposure to organized religion. Lying in bed at night, in a fuzzy liminal dark, Grace has to ask what it means to repent. Her sister, who’s already been through this second baptism herself, has a firmer grasp on the teachings, but she’s also come through them to find her own, personal footing. While Big Mama—who has absorbed the rules but whose only meaning for them is the authority of the community and her husband—fumbles, answering Grace with, “That’s just the way they do it, baby,” before lashing out at the whole line of inquiry, Sister is more contemplative and precise, even when admitting her lack of answers: “All I know is—all I know to be real—is the water. And it be all-knowin’. Just like God. It sees through everything and everyone.”

The words land on Grace, there in the dark, and she purses her lips and dreams. The narrative becomes a little disjointed and surreal at this point, interrupted by Grace’s dreams and potentially choosing metaphor over ritual at its conclusion. It makes sense, because Grace is suddenly torn between her own experiences and the lessons she’s receiving. She remains herself—the way the peach-slicing is filmed is proof enough that her hungry, appreciative eye for beautiful detail is as keen as ever—but she doesn’t trust herself.

And you can tell this is a rich little fourteen-minute film, because we’re a couple paragraphs in, and I’m only just now getting to the heart of it, which is the quiet summer romance Grace has with local Louise (Alexis Cofield). Harris has an incredible eye for the minutiae of young queer love, from its vulnerability—their time together is out of their hands, and at the start, all they can do is plan to meet up again next summer; Sister walks in on a kiss that doesn’t quite break apart in time—to the awkward rush of yearning and the giddy agony before it becomes explicit that it’s returned. You can see Grace and Sophie’s eyelines change as they look at each other’s lips.

Is this, Grace wonders, what she needs to repent of? Is this the sin her baptism is supposed to wash away, so she can go to heaven? Sister, again, those few crucial years older, tries to tell her that she doesn’t need to believe this, but Grace is still young enough that she’s only half-joking when she says that, well, Big Mama does, and she wouldn’t lie to them. If she decides her grandmother is, if surely not lying, then wrong, or misunderstanding, then she’s taking a step past her own solid ground. All she can do is quietly consult the Bible she barely knows—and there’s a full-color illustration of the death and damnation to fall upon men who lie with other men.1

Grace, scared and unsure—unsure of what she believes, unsure of what choosing different beliefs would even mean—calls things off with Sophie, leaving her only a lukewarm promise that she’ll be back next summer. She walks away from those possibilities and out into the surf. And while the minister stands on the shore, waiting, she walks out alone.

Earlier, the film shot her through the stair railing as she hung up her baptism dress, a framing that put Grace behind bars. Now, though, she’s free, out alone with God, or the water, or both. It’s a striking, hopeful final shot—full of Grace and full of grace (look, if the movie’s going to name her that, I get to take advantage of it at some point). Who knows what will be washed away? There is everywhere to go from here.

“Grace” is streaming on the Criterion Channel and Vimeo.

  1. My own childhood Bible had a footnote explaining that a particular passage in Romans makes it clear that all this applies to women who lie with other women, too. I remember that emphasizing little note the way Grace will remember this illustration. ↩︎
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