Thérèse

The life of Therese of Lisieux, told in short scenes that barely connect. She enters the Carmelite convent at fifteen, lives under the same roof as her own sisters, looks for the way to God in the smallest daily things rather than in great works, and dies of tuberculosis at twenty-four. Everyone speaks in plain modern French; there is no choir, no shaft of light, no showy miracle anywhere. Alain Cavalier shot all of it in a bare studio against neutral backing, with the outside world never once visible. It took the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1986 and six Cesars the following year, and Catherine Mouchet won for her first film role. Very few films manage to be about faith while refusing to exalt anything, simply by looking.