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Such a frustrating disappointment

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Blistering performances.

It used to be so rare to see a movie that speaks to the audience outside the dialogues of its characters. Infinitely more rare nowadays. It is amazing how this film just goes far beyond that. I remember the films of Dino Risi which allowed you to validate your own parallel narration against them thanks to the truth they were in. It happens so while listening to classical music. Lourdes renders this ability possible not so for a parallel epic but as the key to unlock the beauty of its own narration.Christine is not religious. She just tries to move. But more than moving with legs, she tries to move with her spirit. This movement will finally prove her greatest asset, almost not for her but for the human kind. The final scenes catch Christine down, very down or more precisely she was supposed to be down according to any earthly or religious proofs. No miracle, no love. No more, as she just is loosing them. But Christine, through the help of this wonderous film, is fine. She is serene as if having a revelation. She is what maybe God intended with a human being. Those final scenes pour and pour the glory of the human spirit. And they pour. The human spirit is INVINCIBLE! Long live Christine! Long live the human spirit!

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

I am Roman Catholic. Lourdes is a blessed, mystical place. I hear. The story goes, the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette in a grotto near Lourdes several times. Word spread, a shrine was built, miracles occurred, all in this small community in the south of France. Now, millions travel to Lourdes every year, looking for intervention from St. Bernadette and the Blessed Mother. While I've never been there, I have been to shrines, like Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount-Royal in Montreal. The relics for sale and presence of the pilgrims are a little scary, but there was no denying the power of the place. So, I was very interested to see a pilgrimage from the perspective of a pilgrim in Lourdes, a movie playing at the Cleveland International Film Festival, this week. Christine is a young woman from France who has multiple sclerosis. She's lost control of her body from the neck down. But, her mind is vibrant, she seems to accept the help of nurse volunteers at Lourdes with a pleasant demeanor. She tells a priest, in confession, that she gets angry over her diagnosis and feels envious of able bodied people, like a nurse who is flirting with a man on the trip that she fancies. This is like a group tour, with a different activity each day: a hike through the grotto, a bath in the water, even an award at the end of the trip for the "Best Pilgrim." Christine's mother is with her on the trip. Their relationship is one of the things that bothered me in the movie. While her mother accepts the role of caregiver, they barely talk or interact, except in a very distant fashion. I didn't get that. A couple of the older volunteers hang together at night and discuss deep topics of faith and spirituality. Juxtapose that with Christine confessing to her nurse that she is not really a believer, she just goes on the pilgrimages because she can't really get out of the house for much else. When the inevitable miracle occurs, within the group, some are jealous, others are skeptical, others just wonder why some are chosen and others are not. Lourdes is a very quiet, very slow moving film. I guess I was hoping for more of an epiphany, but at the end, I wasn't at all sure what I was supposed to take away from it. I was interested but not satisfied. I give Lourdes a 7 out of 10.

Surrounded as we are with noisy and highly coloured new films, not least Avatar, it comes either as a balm or an intense irritant to see one like Lourdes, depending on your attention span.Not surprisingly, this is set in the major pilgrim attraction of Lourdes, and as it opens to the strains of the most beautiful song ever written, Ave Maria of course, with nurses helping disabled and elderly pilgrims to their dining tables, you can guess there isn't going to be much rock'n'roll in this.Christine, the central character, is wheelchair-bound due to multiple sclerosis. She is on the trip with a church group although she isn't all that sold on religion. She shares a room with another woman, who may be her long-time carer or just another traveller. Early in the visit she has a mysterious half-conversation with the handsome uniformed alpha male. Several other sub-plots are hinted at through fleeting glimpses of the action.Christine apparently becomes one of the lucky few to enjoy a miracle cure at Lourdes, which is the turning point for all within range including the officer, the inept priest, her room-mate and a couple of fellow travellers whose attitudes become less than charitable.The story is told through Christine's face much of the time, and could almost work as a silent film. It inevitably has touches of satire, given the setting, but it's cloaked in so much ambiguity that it resembles a David Lynch work. According to my friend, the theme must be the interplay between substance and appearance(both in themselves Catholic obsessions); the difficulty in finding a literal absolute in either, being echoed in the ending. If you can see Lynch's Mulholland Drive as black coffee, this is the Earl Grey tea.And whatever your poison is, you will have a lot to talk, even argue, about after the Lourdes experience.