Lourdes

Highly adept at keeping viewers guessing with her droll narrative swerves and playfully ambivalent tone, Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner ruminates on the mystical power of love, empathy and religious faith in LOURDES, which follows a tour party of sickly pilgrims visiting the French town of the same name. Sylvie Testud gives a luminous performance as Christine, a wheelchair user with severe multiple sclerosis, who appears to undergo a miraculous recovery during her visit to the town, which is celebrated by devout Catholics for its alleged healing properties. A young Léa Seydoux co-stars in Hausner’s delightfully eccentric, magical mystery tour.