Lourdes (Jessica Hausner, 2009, Austria/France) A

I thought this movie lived up to the hype but it's another one of those movies that's almost universally inaccurately described. The movie takes place during a sort of pilgrimage to Lourdes where a group of people with all sorts of disabilities and afflictions go with some clergy folk and sundry volunteer candy striper sorts in search of miracles. The main character is relatively quiet woman with MS who wants to live a better life. Will she find her miracle? Does she? What happens and how does what happens affect all the people with her. There's so much going on in this film and I found myself relating to it not in my typical cerebral manner but instead in this sort of emotional and spiritual way. By the closing credits I truly felt like I wasn't in a movie theater at all but had been sitting in a church praying for some time without even knowing I had gradually teleported to a fantasy cathedral. Of course, the fact that I saw this film in the main theater at the Music Box may have played a large part in creating that sensation. Anyway, I'm not a religious person and I can't say I'm any less of an atheist now than I was three hours ago but I quite liked this film and will likely see it again some day. There was so much going on in that last scene. I was riveted to my seat until the last frame of the end credits... A