Having a real cultural splurge at the cinema at the moment, Lourdes is the second foreign film in a week (a review of the third, I Am Love, coming soon). This French offering is by Austrian director Jessica Hausner who was one time assistant of the fabulous Michael Haneke.
Warning: Potential plot spoilers. The story follows quadriplegic Christine played marvelously by Sylvie Testud (Piaf best friend in La Vie En Rose) who is part of a mixed group visiting the town on pilgrimage cum holiday. Christine is quiet, patient and sweet-natured only once succumbing to self-pity about her disability.
Christine is quickly taken under the wing of an older group member who pushes her to the front of the church to stand a better chance of being blessed by the priest and for extra sessions of bathing in holy water. She starts to get some feeling back into her limbs and after a couple of days can stand and walk.
She is examined by a doctor who is dumbfounded by her apparently miraculous cure. She is applauded wherever she goes and even starts on a tentative romance with one of the male volunteers only to find that her new strength and feeling starts to wain.
Lourdes has seen temporary cures before and the church is reluctant to proclaim miracles before the cure is proven to be a little more long term. Whether Christine's cure is temporary is left up in the air. Having stumbled on the dance floor she reluctantly takes to her wheelchair.
It is certainly a thought provoking piece of cinema questioning faith, why one person should be more deserving of a miracle than another and saying much about peoples response to it. And moving too, the quiet desperation and disappointment the emanates from the film showing that Hausner has certainly learnt a trick or two from her time working with Haneke.
A powerful piece, I found it a satisfying and enjoyable film.
And this is what some other reviewers thoughts:
The Observer 'This quiet, witty, observant film encompasses hope, faith, death and doubt, and it involves us in the progress of a possible miracle and in its aftermath when the party react in different, often unexpected ways to the events they've witnessed.'
Screen Daily 'The performances here are uniformly good, led by Testud but extending to smaller cameos from two gossipy women, the priest, the volunteers and the little cabal of team leaders who meet every evening to play cards and drink wine and joke about Jesus.'
Daily Express 'This pilgrim’s progress is marked by sardonic encounters, awkward conversations, life-changing twists of fate and the sure touch of a writer/director who views all her characters with sympathetic sharp-eyed compassion.'
Metacritic score 71/100
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