Lourdes

From Friday 26th March to Thursday 1st April

1hr 39. Austria/France/Germany 2009. Directed by Jessica Hausner. With Sylvie Testud, Lea Seydoux, Gilette Barbier, Gerhard Liebmann. With English subtitles.

Winner of numerous awards at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, Hausner’s (Hotel) latest feature film as writer/director is a tender and ethereal yet unapologetically tough tale of self-discovery and acceptance. Lourdes tells of Christine (Testud), a wheelchair user who seeks to turn her lonely life around when she embarks on a pilgrimage to the holy station in the Pyrenees Mountains. Arriving in an isolated hamlet, Christine soon finds herself under the stern supervision of head nun Cécile (Elina Löwensohn), who seeks to heal Christine of her affliction through faith and a firm disposition. Hausner is a filmmaker who often tries to provoke through difficult thematic devices, and Lourdes is no exception.

'One of the pleasures of this intelligent, rigorously thoughtful, somewhat sly film is that it takes place in the space between the inexplicable (no explanation is possible) and the unexplained (enlightenment might be around the corner). Its director, Jessica Hausner, an Austrian working here in French, wants to explore the mysteries of life, not its certainties. One great mystery, of course, is faith itself, how people come to believe what they do and how those beliefs affect not just their thinking and feelings but also their bodies. For Christine, who speaks most profoundly through the eerie quiet of her nearly inert form — and then later through a possibly miraculous physical transformation — belief is inscribed on the body itself.' -Manohla Dargis, The New York Times