SUNDANCE 2019 REVIEW: Sacha Polak’s DIRTY GOD offers a redemption story that doesn’t come wrapped with a pretty bow

As Sacha Polak’s DIRTY GOD begins, we meet Jade (Vicky Knight), who is being fitted for a clear Lucite mask to protect her still-healing face prior to leaving the hospital following surgeries to repair what could be repaired in the aftermath of an acid attack by her baby’s father.

The mask may offer protection to the still sensitive and scarred skin, but it can’t offer any kind of buffer from the eyes of the world, not mention, Jade herself. A pretty young woman that clearly and thoughtlessly enjoyed the benefits of beauty – she now faces the harshest of realities for someone that has never had to dig any deeper. Her mother, her best friend, and a former crush – now her best friend’s boyfriend, offer what support they can, but her emotional state has landed her in a place she must climb out of herself, or, as she chooses to do instead – proceed to dig herself in even deeper.

A telemarketing job to save money for the plastic surgery in Marrakesh she believes will fix her face, clubbing with her friend, and online wank sessions with random men offer hope, respite, and distractions. However, the reminders of the man that she believes made her a “monster” are never far from her thoughts and dreams. Her flailing efforts to find her way, leads her to being kicked out her home by her mother due the erratic care she’s offering her own daughter. As she begins to build some esteem based on her own resilience as opposed to her former beauty, she prepares for the surgery she has saved for and built up as the final “fix.”

DIRTY GOD purposefully takes a long, winding and jagged road toward Jade’s efforts to heal and find her own way to a new life she never asked for. This is not an easy redemption story that can take us comfortably across the finish line without the barest of emotional investments. Jade was assuredly not an angle cast down from the heavens, but rather, a working class beauty that is forced to overcome a fate she didn’t deserve. Her God is a “dirty God,” she says. And despite the “curse” her dirty God bestowed upon her, she might discover something within that can transcend the appearance and convince her of a real self-worth. Ultimately, Polak and Knight succeed in giving us just enough insight into her psyche and struggle to want that glimmer to become a sustaining light.

Sacha Polak’s DIRTY GOD offers a redemption story that doesn’t come wrapped with a pretty bow