The brief synopsis of this story is that it's about two old lesbians living in Maine who pick up a hitchhiker. That's not a very good synopsis. This movie is about two people who have loved each other and lived together for 31 years. Age and a selfish granddaughter threaten to end the relationship so these two octogenarian ladies decide to run away in an old, red pickup truck through the back roads of Maine to Canada where they can be married. Along the way they pick up a young, male hitchhiker who happens to be a modern/exotic dancer from New York. This trio then takes an unlikely road trip with a series of misadventures and adventures through the beautifully photographed landscape of eastern Canada.

Olympia Dukakis plays a role you might never expect to see: a crusty old lesbian with the mouth of the saltiest sailor. She is magnificent. Brenda Fricker plays the blind, wise old woman. You root for her every step of the way. A very funny Ryan Doucette plays the hitchhiker. You'd never know this was his first movie.

This movie places everything you expect from a romantic comedy/drama and pours it into new vessels not previously used to hold this vintage. The movie has already played in theaters in every country but the US. In the US, the Lifetime cable channel purchased it, so the language is not likely to survive un-bleeped. Not to worry, it appears on DVD in July, 2013 so you can see it as the author intended: sweet, salty, and well done. (We just saw this movie in San Jose, CA as part of the Camera Cinema Club.)

I absolutely loved hearing what came out of Dukakis' mouth. Seriously my jaws were hurt with laughter with the amount of curse words she was using on people. Man she really did play a butch lesbian really well and like it wouldn't be hard to love her character. Frickers character was brillant too, omg I absolutely laughed at the scene where she accidentally hit the hitchhikers fathers balls with her head, when she thought that she was sleeping with her partner. Seriously Brenda Fricker can play a blind person really well, especially with a lot of humour! I even thought Doucette's character was super good as the hitchhiker and of course, he was very handsome which is a bonus ;P Really though, he was brillant too!

All actors were brilliant including Kristin Booth as the granddaughter. I have to admit though in the end, it was sad and unexpected when Frickers character died and the fact that both women didn't get a chance to have a proper wedding ceremony but it taught us that love never died with those two women!

I give this 9/10!

Outburst with expletives, bottoms and balls (literally, a blind lady has her head jammed between a naked man's thighs),Thom Fitzgerald's CLOUDBURST is not for the prude, adapted from his own awards-winning eponymous play, it is an atypical queer film illustrating a life-affirming story about an elderly lesbian couple, Stella and Dotty, played respectively by two Oscar winning actress Dukakis (MOONSTRUCK, 1987) and Fricker (MY LEFT FOOT, 1989).

Stella and Dotty have been living together for 31 years, during which period Dotty has become blind. When Dotty's self-seeking granddaughter Molly (Booth) puts her in a nursing home, so as to secure the proprietorship of their property, a feisty Stella spirits Dotty away, they embark a road trip from Maine to Nova Scotia to get married. En route they pick up a young hitchhiker Prentice (Doucette),a guileless dancer-cum-stripper, who is on his way to visit his dying mother Cat (O'Brien),eventually, he becomes their best man and officiate their matrimony.

From MOONSTRUCK to CLOUDBURST, hats off to Ms. Dukakis, edging 80-years-old during the filming, she takes up the gauntlet to play the larger-than-life butch dyke stereotype. Stella takes no prisoners in safeguarding her beloved Dotty, she is outspoken, indomitable and uncompromising, with a mouth can put even the most coarse sailor in the shade. She can also be mischievous and tender-heart-ed, the moments when she and Dotty share their rapport and emancipate their affections can be effectively and concurrently heart-warming and tear-jerking.

Ms. Fricker, hides her Irish accent and counterbalances Stella's panache with her more inwardly- radiated warmness, the blind is often the wiser, but she is not a clichéd femme either, when it comes to the crunch, even Stella balks at their future, she remains firm and we realize who is the real decision-maker. Mr. Doucette, reprises his role in the play, is sidelined mostly as a comic relief in spite of his own misery and an eye-candy to offset the senescence-skewing melancholy which has been loomed around since the very onset.

Mr. Fitzgerald doesn't try to sugarcoat a feel-good ending, since certain things cannot be sidestepped at that stage of life (as the title implies),instead, he chooses to instill laughter and hope in those darkest hours, to celebrate their fulfilled love, something only those lucky ones can have. Varnished with the golden-filtered palette and the awe-inspiring vista along their journey, no wonder CLOUDBURST is a massive crowd-pleaser in terms of its boutique license.