But Dotty’s adult granddaughter Molly (Kristin Booth) is oblivious about their relationship, and when that vibrator-chasing incident makes Dotty fall off the bed and strain her arm, Molly consigns her to an elder-care facility for the mentally ill. The loose-limbed opening establishes that Dotty is infirm and nearly blind, and the more capable Stella has been taking care of her for years. The fact that the dotty, periodically helpless member of the duo is actually named Dotty says everything about the overly literal script and the way it lumbers through the frame story that puts its protagonists on the road together. Those scenes suggest a much stronger movie, one not weighted down with corny tropes, painfully on-the-nose dialogue, and oppressive levels of quirk. It’s all pleasant, playful, and natural, and it’s a shame it can’t last.Ĭloudburst has several such moments of authentic, easy emotion, where writer-director Thom Fitzgerald, who first produced his story as a stage play, simply observes the central couple.

Then Stella chases Dotty off the bed with a vibrator, not in a particularly sexual manner, but in a way that suggests copious escapades past, and a relationship dominated by longtime intimacy and a healthy sense of humor. They chuckle over the amateur lesbian porn Stella bought at a nearby gas station-“They make that for men,” tuts Dotty, and Stella leers back, “The hell they do”-and they squabble briefly over who farted. After 31 years as a couple, they’re as comfortable together as a set of well-worn jersey sheets. There’s a marvelous scene early in the Canadian/American co-production Cloudburst, as septuagenarian lesbians Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dotty (Brenda Fricker) companionably settle down for bed.

Where was cloudburst filmed