Lourdes

Lourdes

96 Minutes

Claims of miraculous healing at Lourdes are shrouded in equal parts mystery and hype. Each year more than five million visitors – skeptics, pilgrims, tourists and salvation seekers – descend upon this tiny town in the Pyrenees, driven by myriad motives to a place where sometimes, supposedly, the unexplainable occurs. In Lourdes, Austrian director Jessica Hausner probes into one such group of pilgrims, making a cynosure of a wheelchair-bound young woman in order to expose and explore the effects of a miracle upon the human mind.

Christine (Sylvie Testud) travels to Lourdes on a volunteer-led pilgrimage, together with other elderly and infirm supplicants hoping for a scrap of grace, a taste of the miraculous — or maybe, as several of the older pilgrims and Christine herself indicate, the simple companionship and opportunity for travel that such trips afford lonely and homebound invalids. Their leader, the wan and pious Cécile (Elina Löwensohn), insists that healing must touch the soul before it can alter the body, and prays with a fragile fervor that underscores her sincerity; by contrast, her pretty young assistant Maria (Léa Seydoux), Christine’s caretaker, is utterly disengaged from the spiritual aspects of the trip, concentrating instead on the attentions of the group’s handsome escort officer (Bruno Todeschini). Hausner’s juxtaposition of ascetic piety and burgeoning, vital sexuality immediately establishes the intrinsic divisions within the group – between the able-bodied and the infirm, the pious and doubtful, the passive and aggressive, the active pilgrims and the tourist onlookers. These divisions are further exposed as we meet other pilgrims (a group of gossipy skeptics, a mother determined to help her ailing daughter, an old woman hell-bent on a miracle who takes Christine under her wing), learn their sometimes jarring notions of who “deserves” grace or is “worth” healing — and yet find them united by their collective baited breath under the unpredictable auspices of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Quietly, unobtrusively, Hausner brings us among them: we, too, find ourselves waiting, seduced by the anticipatory tension palpable in every scene. Lourdes captures the transformative power that possibility wields upon us all, and even the otherwise clinical air associated with nurse’s uniforms and wheelchairs, austere hospital accommodations, the melancholy clink of cafeteria silverware…none of it dampens the otherworldly, porcelain palate of Hausner’s cinematic exploration of selective grace. Her cast is no exception, with faces so exquisitely expressive (particularly Testud, Löwensohn and Seydoux) that we feel their respective uncertainty, desperate belief and detachment with the beautiful economy of a timid smile or a pleading eye. As Christine, Testud exudes at once a waif-like innocence, an impish curiosity, and a subtle yet surprisingly powerful emotionality which, when aroused, suggests a vaguely frightening (though completely understandable) capacity for anger at the senselessness of her affliction. She is hardly the worst off amongst her companions, and she knows it; but watching her eyes while healthy, vibrant Marie flirts with the male escorts, or when first Cécile and then a priest admonish her for dreaming of a cured body instead of a graced soul, it is painfully clear that, for Christine, redemption of the soul pales in comparison to the glittering prospect of a “normal” life. Incredibly, she is granted a chance at such a life – and then the skeptic’s cloud descends upon her.

It’s funny, the way our minds and hearts respond to a miracle: no sooner does that which we desire most appear before us than we question it, doubt it – imagine it taken away. Led by, but by no means limited to the resident gossips amongst the group, Christine’s companions debate her worthiness of such a miracle, comparing her to the others with an eagerness stronger than their former hopes and indicative, perhaps, of a human capacity for judgment that trumps both compassion and belief. What follows is a poignant sequence wherein Christine attempts to assert her miracle in the face of inescapable skepticism. She wants to be triumphant, yet finds herself judged and even senses the “injustice” of “winning” over her more sickly peers. Is she judging her worth? Are we? Of course we are; Hausner sets us up, we haven’t got a choice. And it’s a disturbing realization, one that Hausner won’t permit us to ignore.

The saintly and the miraculous are present in Lourdes, that much is certain. But throughout the film, the question persists: is this divine aura a construction? A cloud of fervent belief and wishful thinking, bolstered even by doubters who can’t help but be swept up in the suspense? Because there’s something eerie, almost sinister about that suspense, even couched as it is in the ethereal beauty and spiritual power of Lourdes’ believers. Hope, doubt, and the specter of inexplicable mystery constitute the peculiar ruling trinity in this film, with God as an aside, a subject for speculative debate. One pilgrim contends that, with such a random criteria for granting miracles, God “must not be in charge;” another counters, “If He isn’t, who is?” Lourdes doesn’t pretend to have the answer, but it makes for a fascinating hour or so rumination on the subject; and that’s as good a start as any.

by Lauren Westerfield