This is Robert Gant. If you don’t know him from Queer As Folk or Billy’s Dad Is a Fudgepacker, you will from Save Me. It’s the story of a couple of gay guys who meet in an ex gay Christian recovery center – no, make that a Christian gay recovery program – and fall in love and ride off into the New Mexico afternoon sun in a pickup truck. Chad Allen plays the other half, a man with a substance abuse problem who gets saved by Jesus before realizing he is butterflies and weak in the knees for the birdhouse-building Scott (Gant). At the center of this simple but heartrending tale is Judith Light, who plays the leader of the recovery center, a woman who shunned her gay son who died of a drug overdose. “As you know,” she said after the not-a-dry-eye-in-the-house screening, “my heart lies with the LGBT community, so I had to really let go of my judgement and prejudice to play this character.” And play it she did. Can you say Independent Spirit Award nom in ’08 and gay sainthood to follow Saint Judith Sister Woman? I can.

– David A Keeps