April 13, 2010
I’ve heard that Lourdes is quite a depressing place. Mainly visited by desperate and otherwise hopeless people craving divine intervention to heal body and mind, a tacky tourist industry has also developed to milk the needy. If you don’t believe in miracles, you’d probably be offended on almost every level. In the hands of director Jessica Hausner, however, Lourdes becomes a setting for a subtle and intricate drama with a healthy dollop of social comedy. This is a film about social and religious hypocrisy as much as the need for places like Lourdes to exist in the first place. It is a beautiful piece of work, filmed with a faint echo of social realism to give it genuine human depth. It’s also very funny.
Christine (Sylvie Testud) is a young woman with multiple sclerosis. She is in a wheelchair, and can’t feed herself. Along with several other pilgrims in wheelchairs, Christine arrives in Lourdes on a trip organised by resident nurses and priests. This ‘holiday’ is a bit like an austere version of Butlins, with the wet t-shirt competition replaced by a ‘best pilgrim’ prize at the end of the week. Yet the film doesn’t overplay the absurd, or indeed Christine’s desperation at her condition. She isn’t at Lourdes to get healed, but to get out of the house. Her helper for the week is volunteering because it gives her more of a sense of purpose than her usual ski trip. Another man has dirty dreams instead of those of the Virgin Mary.
But when strange things do begin to happen, pilgrims and priests alike are stunned that, just maybe, the religious mysticism that they have bought into may be real. God moves in mysterious ways, and not necessarily in the ways that had been anticipated, and Hausner plays with the audience too in this regard with a late twist. But the slightly distant, observational way the film is shot allows us to smile at how the characters deal with events, whilst also maintaining a certain mysticism to the whole piece.
Lourdes is an intriguing and very engaging film, and you’ll be pleased you saw it. There are some laugh out-loud moments – the 3 priests sharing a joke is priceless – and the story is well paced and sincere. I’d definitely watch this again because I think it probably deserves it.
Christine (Sylvie Testud) is a young woman with multiple sclerosis. She is in a wheelchair, and can’t feed herself. Along with several other pilgrims in wheelchairs, Christine arrives in Lourdes on a trip organised by resident nurses and priests. This ‘holiday’ is a bit like an austere version of Butlins, with the wet t-shirt competition replaced by a ‘best pilgrim’ prize at the end of the week. Yet the film doesn’t overplay the absurd, or indeed Christine’s desperation at her condition. She isn’t at Lourdes to get healed, but to get out of the house. Her helper for the week is volunteering because it gives her more of a sense of purpose than her usual ski trip. Another man has dirty dreams instead of those of the Virgin Mary.
But when strange things do begin to happen, pilgrims and priests alike are stunned that, just maybe, the religious mysticism that they have bought into may be real. God moves in mysterious ways, and not necessarily in the ways that had been anticipated, and Hausner plays with the audience too in this regard with a late twist. But the slightly distant, observational way the film is shot allows us to smile at how the characters deal with events, whilst also maintaining a certain mysticism to the whole piece.
Lourdes is an intriguing and very engaging film, and you’ll be pleased you saw it. There are some laugh out-loud moments – the 3 priests sharing a joke is priceless – and the story is well paced and sincere. I’d definitely watch this again because I think it probably deserves it.