I found this movie on Netflix streaming movies. I had recently re-watched 'Juno' and wanted to see a few other roles Ellen Page had before she became famous. The title comes from an early scene where some 'SPARK' members are demonstrating mouth-to-mouth one evening in the streets of Berlin. There also is a much later scene where it was used to try to save someone. But on a more symbolic level it could apply to what the members of the SPARK cult provide for each other, for survival.Ellen Page is London high-schooler Sherry . She just doesn't seem to identify with the rigid life and decides to just go away, joining up with the others in SPARK, headed eventually to Portugal in the SPARK bus. Natasha Wightman plays Sherry's mother, Rose , soon hitting the road to look for Sherry, and quite unexpectedly finds her.Eric Thal is the defacto leader of SPARK, and as is the case with cults, he makes the rules and decides what the punishment is if someone breaks them. But his method is even more insidious, he befriends the prettiest, has sex with them, then shuns them. As Sherry finds out the hard (no pun intended) way. As they eventually stand up to him, explaining he 'sucks the souls out of people.'I suppose the main thrust of the story is the overused 'coming of age' experience, this for Sherry. She finally wises up and breaks free, but in a twist her mother decides staying with SPARK is what she really wants out of life.It is not an easy movie to watch, mainly because you know there are street people like that all over. But it is a good watch for Ellen Page, she is amazingly good.

Eye opening look at lost souls of the street. Disenchanted teen Sherry(Ellen Page)is hitching through Europe trying to get away from her single mom Rose(Natasha Wightman). Sherry falls in with a cult-like group of young people; former drug addicts and prostitutes. This is just one of many like groups living an underground existence. The charismatic leader of this particular band of misfits is Harry(Eric Thal), who wants to lead his followers to a mystical and euphoric place that also seems lost. Mind control and habit changing techniques are supposedly going to keep these people off the streets...and supplying them a future. Sherry's mother finally catches up with her placing her voyage of self discovery in considerable doubt. Cinematography and camera angles provide for a disconnected atmosphere. This gritty indy film is directed by Alison Murray based on some of her own real-life experiences. MOUTH to MOUTH is definitely not mainstream. Page is excellent and truthfully the only reason I chose to check this flick out. Others in the cast: Beatrice Brown, Diana Greenwood, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Jefferson Guzman, Armin Dillenberger, August Diehl and Willie Rachow. Beware of course language and sexual situations.

This film is based on an interesting idea which in the right hands could have been a wonderful film. Its an indie film, of course it is, but I have seen a good few indie films and this really hits rock with the director. I mean Alison Murray, I'm sure she knows a lot about being a teenage dropout but she doesn't know much about making a gripping film.Its got some pretty good casting, about six of the people cast were okay actors and that includes Ellen Page, it didn't really push her the way a film and a good director should, as as we have all seen - she can do a lot better! The film was shot as though Murray read about every effect you can do with a camera and thought - I'm gonna use them all! It went light for no reason, it didn't accentuate a feeling or to show an emotion, it wasn't intimate or innocent it just was and in my experience, ever shot should be justified, from the first to the very last.The sound track was good, I'll give you that. And some of it was quite hard hitting, but I find it difficult to believe that I just watched a film where people died in the course of an anarchist group trying to find freedom and I don't care about them. It wasn't believable, no grief, no despair, no anguish. I wasn't reeled in, I didn't feel their pain and so I didn't believe in its reality.It is that typical film made by someone who wants to tell their 'incredible story' and just got out of art school. It tries to fit too much in to the plot when a good film can focus on both plot and the dimension of the characters. The ending was excruciating and I cant believe I just spent £15 on this film.

Directly preceding "Hard Candy", the film that made her name, "Mouth to Mouth" is Ellen Page's break-out movie and it's easy to see why. Her performance as Sherry, a lost young girl in Eastern Europe finding sanctuary with a group of sub-hippies, is a standout in it's bravery and sheer physicality.Sherry (Page) is a runaway from Canada loose in Germany who takes up with a group called SPARK (Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge), a group of similarly adrift young people taken under the wing of Harry (Eric Thal), an older man with high ideals. Other notable people in the group include fun-loving Nancy (Beatrice Brown) and friendly, zany Mad Ax (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos). Sherry shares a conflicted relationship with her mother (Natasha Wightman) who joins the group in an effort to reclaim her, but the two of them come under strain when it's clear that Harry is less interested in high ideals and more interested in controlling the group by any means necessary...The central of themes of how ideals are subverted in the name of power, even with this group of so-called radicals, are realised in the latter part of the film where Harry sets his group to work on a vineyard where his true motivations become clear. While this is very interesting to watch, I still thought more could have been done with it. As good a character as Harry is as written, Eric Thal does not seem to have the range to make his transformation truly register emotionally. Consequently a good part of the film falls down.It is Page, of course, that saves the movie although even she is not quite at her best here. Her performance does not have the wit of her "X-Men" and "Juno" appearances, nor the edge she would acquire doing "Hard Candy". Nevertheless there is a strong and truthful physicality in her presence that registers best in unspoken moments, especially the roadside exchanges between her and Wightman, and later McCabe-Lokos. These two scenes are like a dance, yet seem perfectly natural and it's difficult to imagine another actor doing them this well."Mouth to Mouth" is Region 1 and hard to find in this country, but it is worth looking up anyway for it's interesting themes and Page's central performance.