Lourdes (2010)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Before I got down to watch it, I thought it was all gonna be about a girl who was going to Lourdes in order to cure of being in a wheelchair. After watching 10 minutes of this film, I felt there was nothing much going on but only seeing people walking around the pilgrimage but nothing else. It might've changed later during the movie but I wouldn't waste my breath in watching the whole movie! It would be too late then for me to see the action. For me, I would rather see the action in movies at the beginning straight away because you are in with the story already and it makes your time well spent in looking at the movie!I just think the movie could've done better in showing only the characters to the audience then seeing the passersbys. It just makes the film look rather dull in my opinion! It's very disappointing that it's too slow!

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!

This movie was shot in Lourdes, with the agreement of Church authorities, but after watching it we have to think if today the outcome would be the same.It's a very slow movie that follows in a documentary way a group of pilgrims during a week in Lourdes. It shows the spiritual believes and hopes of people, but also the business, the envy and greed that establishes between the group, when a "miracle" finally occurs. The main issue is: why her and not me? After all, people are there to have a spiritual experience or to be healed? And if so, what should we (they) do to be the ones to receive it? Also, we witness the process of acknowledging a miracle, with all the caution put into it by church doctors. The most interesting thing here is that nothing is explicitly told, but if you "look" into what is going on with a critic mind, you will notice that there is a lot more behind "believing".I really think that being religious or not has an influence on how you understand this movie, due to the almost casual way that things are shown. And there is a tremendous irony going on there.

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.