bbrooks94 Borderline masterpiece. Beautiful film about, you guessed it, Lourdes (a small market town in the Pyrenees where a number of supposedly 'mystical' healings have occurred.) More specifically, it follows the story of Christine, a wheel chair using woman with multiple sclerosis and a number of others who hope to be healed. It is a very moving piece of cinema and can be interpreted in two ways. One, religious, the other, sceptical. I prefer the latter explanation, but the film's true intentions are not exactly clear. Either way, the film illustrates hypocrisy and masked cruelty of Catholicism in a subtle and beautiful way. Having said that, there is a mystical, almost haunting, air to the film. The quiet, echoing organ music that plays repeatedly throughout further enhances this feeling.

jodro This is a dreadful film. If it had been made in the 1960s, criticising the petty-mindedness of the bourgeoisie and the blame-the-victim attitude of Christianity, it would have been a fairly mediocre but worthwhile and important effort. But it was made in 2009, and the world has moved on, in some respects at least. I live a couple of hours from Lourdes, and people here in France simply don't talk and act as repressed (any more) as they do in the movie. The dialogue was incredibly stilted and full of clichés, as were the characterisations. Some people write that the movie comments on life and religion on many subtle ways. Other than showcasing, once again, the cruelty and incompetence of the Christian mindset towards those that suffer, I didn't see any deep meanings, subtlety or anything illuminating making it worthwhile sitting through all this. I mean, do we really have to listen, again, to people discussing that hoary old chestnut, of how God can be all powerful and all good, yet allows suffering in the world? Or the man walking away from the girl after she falls, how much more clichéd can you get? The film clearly is made with honesty and integrity, but sadly with a great lack of originality. It looks as if Hausner tried to make a film in the tradition of social realism, which is fair enough, but it's far inferior to many other movies in the genre, and her approach really is forty years out of date.

paasa-3 This movie was shot in Lourdes, with the agreement of Church authorities, but after watching it we have to think if today the outcome would be the same.It's a very slow movie that follows in a documentary way a group of pilgrims during a week in Lourdes. It shows the spiritual believes and hopes of people, but also the business, the envy and greed that establishes between the group, when a "miracle" finally occurs. The main issue is: why her and not me? After all, people are there to have a spiritual experience or to be healed? And if so, what should we (they) do to be the ones to receive it? Also, we witness the process of acknowledging a miracle, with all the caution put into it by church doctors. The most interesting thing here is that nothing is explicitly told, but if you "look" into what is going on with a critic mind, you will notice that there is a lot more behind "believing".I really think that being religious or not has an influence on how you understand this movie, due to the almost casual way that things are shown. And there is a tremendous irony going on there.

Framescourer Jessica Hausner's story of a young woman who appears to be cured of MS whilst on pilgrimage to Lourdes is a patient, fluid film that moves between satire and compassion. It often exhibits a genuine empathy for the core tenets and consequent outward trappings of Catholicism. As a general examination of the Catholic faith it's accurate and probing, capturing the unavoidable selfishness and vanity of us all even in the face of our own attempts at generosity or even piety.Yet I liked this film more because the omnipresent core of Catholicism recedes as subject. Quietly but surely, the individuals become the focus of the film. Of course, at the centre is Sylvie Testud's Christine, a marvellous performance in which intellect and emotion is in perpetual, discreet motion - but there's no self-pity and, apart from a rather dislocated intonation of standard liturgical incantations, no mention of God. Christine doesn't reject the theme park of piety revolving about her but she seems to find it a focus for a personal confrontation with her affliction. Key to the offsetting of this is a performance of equal discretion and focus, that of the genuinely pious but equally worldly Gilette Barbier as Frau Hartl, with whom Christine shares a room. The other satellite roles are all well-taken; I did like that Léa Seydoux never overdid her turn as the immature nurse assigned to Christine.A well designed and paced film, Lourdes also has a moments of wit. It not only examines the nature of devotion but does so in the appositely Christian context of an interesting yarn. 7/10