A paralyzed young woman with MS stands up and walks in “Lourdes,” but it’ll be a real miracle if anyone manages to stay awake throughout this extravagantly dull film.
Shot in lengthy, quiet takes, the film follows a tour-bus pilgrim (Sylvie Testud) as she visits the tour sites of the French town where the Virgin Mary supposedly made an unscheduled appearance in 1858. Wheelchair-bound pilgrims chatter anxiously about miracles and pretty nurses bustle about as director Jessica Hausner’s camera lingers skeptically on Catholic tchotchke shops and kitsch images of the Virgin.
An hour into the film, something finally happens: the MS sufferer gets out of bed and strolls around, striking up a hint of a romance and wondering whether she has been singled out for healing. Maybe there is something to this Lourdes business, or maybe her disease is simply on hiatus. Who knows?
The movie isn’t puckish enough to be a satire, isn’t devotional enough to make you think about miracles. It finally is so controlled and distant that it says nothing at all. Slowly.