COME ON, PILGRIM : Jessica Hausner’s ‘Lourdes’ [6/10]

Precisely modulated ambiguity is very much the name of the game in Lourdes, which sees writer-director Jessica Hausner going some way to regaining her stride following her sophomore stumble with 2004’s Hotel. As with Hotel and her highly promising 2001 debut feature Lovely Rita (she made a 47-minute installation-cum-featurette in 2006, Toast), the focus is on a female protagonist adrift in an unsettling, unusual environment.
   Lovely Rita‘s eponymous heroine endured a soul-numbingly middle-class existence in a faceless suburb, attending a convent-school and seeking escape (and release) in hazardous sexual experimentation.In Hotel, a static homage to Lynch, Polanski and Kubrick, we observed receptionist Irene over the course of her first few days working at the secluded Hotel Waldhaus, during which she explored the mysteries of the establishment and specifically the fate of her predecessor.
   After scrutinising life at home and at work, Hausner now expands her vision further: the main character in Lourdes is a quadriplegic sufferer of multiple sclerosis (all of Hausner’s heroines are trapped in some way) visiting the French town world-famous for its reputation as a place of religious pilgrimage.
   The (unnamed) protagonist of Lourdes, played by Sylvie Testud, is part of a group comprising individuals afflicted by disease and/or disability, many of them devoutly religious and hoping for a miraculous cure. Testud’s character – named as ‘Christine’ in some sources – doesn’t seem to be religious at all, and freely admits that she’s taken the trip more for a change of scenery that in hope of a sudden alleviation of her malady. But, Hausner seems to suggest, one doesn’t necessarily have to believe in God for him to believe in you…
   The key word being “seems.” Authorial voice and intention is consistently elusive, as Hausner presents proceedings with a very careful detachment that leaves the viewer to form their own conclusions. The script is spare, dialogue sparse, and much is conveyed by significant glances, expressions and gestures, by whispered asides (Testud’s meek-and-mild visage, meanwhile, may make older viewers remember Victor Mature’s comment that he succeeded in biblical spectacles thanks to his ability to “make with the holy look”). Along the way, the characters display considerable amounts of faith and hope, but charity proves surprisingly thin in the ground. 
    Though the film is dealing with weighty issues – love, faith, grace, destiny – nothing is discussed or addressed directly. Instead a picture is painted using only oblique, delicate strokes – with results that are technically impressive, but somehow cumulatively somewhat frustrating. At its centre is Testud’s slow-blossoming performance – her tentative smiles are moments of joy – which provides a crucial element of warmth in what’s otherwise often a slightly chilly exercise in millimetre-sharp precision. In a terrain of rigidly-positioned plaster saints, Testud is the word made flesh.

Neil Young
10th  April, 2010

LOURDES : [6/10]
Jessica HAUSNER : Austria/France(/Ger.) 2009 : 99m (BBFC) : {17/28}
seen at Cornerhouse cinema, Manchester, 8th April 2010 (£5.00)