ThiefHott Too much of everything

VividSimon Simply Perfect

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

michaelgfalk That was George Martin's description of Lennon and Maccartney's songwriting partnership: Maccartney provided the olive oil, and Lennon the vinegar. The balance is just as perfect in this movie, which manages to capture the temple of crass which is Lourdes, without ridiculing the faith that leads people to revere it. It is a quiet movie, with little dialogue, and frequent recurring motifs—religious services, visits to the grotto, Lourdes water in ghastly containers. The little cast of characters is superb, and there are no weak performances here.If I had one criticism, it's that the movie is sometimes too subtle for its own good. Occasionally, I like to be told what I'm watching and why it's significant. Perhaps this is my own crudeness. Nevertheless a brilliant movie, that made me chuckle and yet moved me.

Gabriel Costea 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!

bbrooks94 Borderline masterpiece. Beautiful film about, you guessed it, Lourdes (a small market town in the Pyrenees where a number of supposedly 'mystical' healings have occurred.) More specifically, it follows the story of Christine, a wheel chair using woman with multiple sclerosis and a number of others who hope to be healed. It is a very moving piece of cinema and can be interpreted in two ways. One, religious, the other, sceptical. I prefer the latter explanation, but the film's true intentions are not exactly clear. Either way, the film illustrates hypocrisy and masked cruelty of Catholicism in a subtle and beautiful way. Having said that, there is a mystical, almost haunting, air to the film. The quiet, echoing organ music that plays repeatedly throughout further enhances this feeling.

jodro This is a dreadful film. If it had been made in the 1960s, criticising the petty-mindedness of the bourgeoisie and the blame-the-victim attitude of Christianity, it would have been a fairly mediocre but worthwhile and important effort. But it was made in 2009, and the world has moved on, in some respects at least. I live a couple of hours from Lourdes, and people here in France simply don't talk and act as repressed (any more) as they do in the movie. The dialogue was incredibly stilted and full of clichés, as were the characterisations. Some people write that the movie comments on life and religion on many subtle ways. Other than showcasing, once again, the cruelty and incompetence of the Christian mindset towards those that suffer, I didn't see any deep meanings, subtlety or anything illuminating making it worthwhile sitting through all this. I mean, do we really have to listen, again, to people discussing that hoary old chestnut, of how God can be all powerful and all good, yet allows suffering in the world? Or the man walking away from the girl after she falls, how much more clichéd can you get? The film clearly is made with honesty and integrity, but sadly with a great lack of originality. It looks as if Hausner tried to make a film in the tradition of social realism, which is fair enough, but it's far inferior to many other movies in the genre, and her approach really is forty years out of date.