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!

Austrian screenwriter and director Jessica Hausner's third feature film film which she wrote, premiered In competition at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009, was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 34th Toronto International Film Festival in 2009, was shot on location in France and is a France-Germany-Austria co-production which was produced by producers Martin Gschlacht, Philippe Bober and Suzanne Marian. It tells the story about a young woman with Multiple Sclerosis named Christine. She is chained to a wheelchair and can only get out if she signs up for cultural or Christian trips. Christine has previously visited Rome, but her next destination is Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.This finely tuned fictional tale is set in the Christian pilgrimage town Lourdes in France, a fine choice of location, where the Virgin Mary apparently appeared to a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, and Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner tells the story about a reserved though smiling and obliging woman who arrives at Lourdes hoping to be cured of her chronic illness. Jessica Hausner's quiet reflection of the intangibility concerning miracles and peoples individual relations to their faith is intellectually debated and asks several interesting questions that are also answered. All though her film has elements of divinity by it in the use of music and some remarkable scenes, it is by no means an overly religious film. "Lourdes" is rather a concentrated study of an enigmatic theme and a film where the characters reactions and reception to the abstract is the core and where the existential converges with the mysterious and the distinct with the abstract.Austrian cinematographer Martin Gschlacht's skillful and structural cinematography compliments Jessica Hausner's clear vision, and her steady, stringent and partly static direction is at its best when she films the main character from versatile perspectives and creates describing portraits of an archetype character, excellently played by French actress, screenwriter and director Sylvie Testud in a vital and radiating interpretation of a character that only has her face and her words to express herself with. Most actors delivers convincing acting and Jessica Hausner's film has a strong humane warmth that shines through the heroine's being, and an elusive atmosphere which is effectuated by the esoteric faces of the guests and employees at the place that has been called the Catholic Church's answer to Disneyland. An innovating and artistic film from a director with a recognizable personal style where one is left feeling like having seen something that lasted significantly longer than its running time.

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.