Hadewijch

Céline is a novice in a convent. Her faith has taken so hard a form that she does not eat, stays outside in the cold and punishes herself. The Mother Superior reads this as illness rather than devotion and sends her out. Céline returns to Paris, where her family is wealthy, the apartment is large and she does not belong. She befriends two brothers she meets in the street, one of them Nassir, who is close to a radical group. Bruno Dumont writes and directs. Julie Sokolowski plays Céline in her first film. The name Hadewijch comes from a medieval Flemish mystic and poet. Céline takes it in the convent, and the subject of the film is what sits at the centre of those poems: love for god that goes unanswered. The comparison it draws is contentious. It builds Christian mysticism and Islamist radicalisation as two states of one structure: an absolute love and the damage that love does to the body. Dumont leaves it there, without explanation or thesis. It won the FIPRESCI prize at the 2009 Toronto film festival. Dumont's known method is here too: non professional actors, long silences, scenes without music, and an edit that refuses to explain. Who it is for: viewers who follow Bruno Dumont and hard films built on faith. Who it is not for: the pace is very slow, the acting is deliberately flat, and the ending will be both abrupt and unacceptable for some.