Mississippi Queen: The GLBT Community and Ex-Gay Ministries in the South

With Mississippi Queen, Paige Williams joins a growing list of filmmakers using a nonfiction documentary platform in order to vent personal issues. For Williams, a lesbian, the difficulties are grounded in her thorny relationship with her Mississippi-based parents, Judy and Jerry, devout Southern Baptists who founded a so-called “ex-gay ministry” after she left home (the film unfortunately skims over the question of how the enterprise operates). Williams attempts to draw her mother and father into expressing their differences with her, but this simply results in embarrassing exchanges between irritated adults engaged in perpetually parallel conversations. Williams also drags in her wife, who voices constant annoyance about the barely concealed contempt she feels from Judy and Jerry. When Williams mercifully turns the camera away from her domestic troubles, the documentary is much more effective, presenting sincere interviews with men and women who went through the ex-gay ministry regimen in an attempt to suppress their homosexuality. Detailing their experiences, these individuals eventually acknowledge that their efforts to convert left them closer to celibate asexuality than full-fledged heterosexuality. While these conversations are genuinely fascinating, the home-movie elements ultimately detract from the documentary's value. An optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)