Rachael Harris stars as Linda in NATURAL SELECTION (Cinema Guild)

One could debate exactly what kind of film this is. It’s a comedy, or at least it attempts to be one, with hammy slapstick gags, carefully planned go-wrong setups, and a cartoonish cast of Bible Belt small-townsfolk. It’s also a realistic critique of Bible thumping and the sexual repression it engenders. Ultimately, there’s bland audience-pleasing drama, too. One could go into the details of how first-time writer/director Robbie Pickering bends genre to craft a uniquely told story that surprises in its use of various conventions, but frankly it’s just not that good.

Linda (Rachael Harris) is a barren housewife to an agonizingly strict Christian, Abe (John Diehl). Since the couple is unable to have children, Abe dictates that they should no longer have sex at all. Linda’s already sheltered world busts wide open when Abe suffers a heart attack while donating sperm at a local clinic, a practice Linda learns he’s kept up for years and years. She also learns of a result of his donations, his biological son Raymond, fully grown now, whom she sets out on an interstate journey to find. Raymond and Linda are a classic mismatch, she conservative and level headed and he wild and unmannered. The two begin a fateful journey back to Texas to bring Raymond to the comatose Abe.

The most frustrating parts are the jokes. Physical humor abounds, especially from lanky, goofy actor Matt O’Leary’s Raymond. He’s a caricature, like the rest of the overacting cast (with the exception of Harris, but she’s ultimately adrift in the confusion of this scattershot movie), but his role is full of embarrassing stumbles and scrambles, turning him into a complete clown instead of the misguided ne’er-do-well he’s supposed to be. At the end, his largely unjustified attempt at redemption (he has finally washed and combed his long hair) is completely out of character, and it feels like a scripted happy ending instead of any real resolution.

Luckily, the director has an edge. Moments of surprise prevent this film from completely sinking. Raymond and Linda have secrets, even demons, of their own—expect them to come out. Pickering at least shows us a happy ending might not be truly happy, and even love itself might not be truly love. These adults still have a lot of learning to do, and Pickering makes us question what we might have thought was acceptable adult behavior.

I suppose if you shoot in all directions, you end up hitting something. Pickering may have made a misshaped slapstick comedy, but he sure gets subversiveness right. His biggest target is conventional Christian morality. Linda makes a unique and holistic spiritual change, and she’s all the better for it. Now, I don’t pretend to defend the church, as I don’t feel Pickering is doing here either, but somewhere in Linda’s journey, it’s as if he’s showing us a way Linda can actually hold onto her faith. Or at least that’s how I prefer to think about it.