Reviews for February 17th, 2010
Lourdes
Directed by Jessica Hausner.
In French with subtitles. Christine (Sylvie Testud), a wheelchair-bound woman paralyzed in her arms and legs and suffering from multiple sclerosis, goes on a pilgrimage with Order of Malta nurses all the way to Lourdes in hope of a miracle when visiting a holy location there. The head nurse, Cécile (Elina Löwensohn), often has very serious, sad expressions on her face as she also joins the pilgrimage. Along the way, the nurses flirt with the male guards and vice versa. Christine’s personal nurse, Maria (Léa Seydoux), flirts with a very dapper and friendly guard, Kuno (Bruno Todeschini). When Christine recovers all-of-a-sudden from her neurodegenerative disease and gets up from her wheelchair, she soon expresses a romantic interest in Kuno. Has Christine been cured from the disease because of a miracle or not? How might that answer change if the disease suddenly comes back? Those are just a few of the thought-provoking questions that writer/director Jessica Hausner asks you to ponder, but she wisely trusts your intelligence as an audience because she doesn’t spoon feed you with easy answers. 18th century philosopher David Hume once wrote in Of Miracles that, “no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” There are those who choose to believe their existence even without “a posteriori” evidence while others don’t believe in them , but what it always comes down to is a matter of belief. Back to the film itself, Huasner also doesn’t develop the character of Christine with a backstory or much dialogue for that matter, but that’s forgivable because it makes Christine seem more mysterious and unpredictable, especially in the way that she changes spiritually when she no longer has multiple sclerosis. The film wouldn’t be so engrossing without Sylvie Testud’s genuinely poignant and tender performance—as an actress, her facial expressions are so interesting and full of life that you’re able to grasp what she’s thinking even when she’s not talking. Hausner moves the pace along leisurely in such a way that allows for you to absorb all of the visual richness and give you some chances to contemplate the deceptively simple events. At a running time of 1 hour and 39 minutes, Lourdes manages to be visually rich, provocative and engrossing with a quietly tender, radiant performance by the reliable-as-always Sylvie Testud. Number of times I checked my watch: 1 Released by Palisades Tartan. Opens at the Film Forum. 
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