Thérèse
Encyclopedia
Thérèse is a film about the life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first released in 1986 and directed by Alain Cavalier
.
's account of Thérèse's joy in her vocation is based on her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul
.
, and was introduced by Marina Warner. 'I think Thérèse is a rare and beautiful film... no film has ever before transmitted so involvingly the bliss the mystics describe of communion with God, the intense pleasure a saint like Thérèse felt at her intimacy with Jesus, the deprivation she experienced when He seemed to be absent and the comfort and affection of young women sequestered together... Cavalier's visual style, the film's restrained spectrum, its dove greys, bistres, waxy whites, recall the quiet images Gwen John
painted in Normandy of nuns reading, praying... Cavalier scans the properties of convent life... He has learned from Robert Bresson
how to linger on an image, how to give symbolic intensity to humdrum objects, by isolating them in the frame, and gentle repetition.'
In The New Yorker
the critic Pauline Kael
wrote that - " Watching Thérèse is like looking at a book of photographs of respectfully staged tableaux and not being allowed to flip the pages at your own speed. You have to sit there while Cavalier turns them for you, evenly, monotonously, allowing their full morbid beauty to sink in. You're trapped inside his glass bubble."
The academic Mary Bryant called the film , " by far the most effective and challenging rendering of the Thérèse-event in the decade leading up to Thérèse's centenary year in 1997." "Alain Cavalier was careful at pre-production stage to immerse himself not only in data, but also in visual and atmospheric detail. His film is a beautifully lit evocation of the stylised poverty of Carmel, which is like that which we now associate with Shaker furniture and interiors. Although Cavalier did visit the Lisieux Carmel, and spoke to the sisters there, the film was not shot on location there, and makes no attempt to reproduce the recognisable architecture of that monastery. Instead it focuses upon faces in spaces, intensity within enclosure, as in the late plays of Samuel Beckett
. There are no exterior shots at all in the film; instead , the presence of an extra-monastic world is conveyed obliquely, by the background cooing of a wood pigeon, or by the green, pulsating body of a tiny crouching frog, cupped in the hand of an infirmarian, and brought in to give pleasure to the dying Thérèse."
"The actress Catherine Mouchet, who plays Thérèse ( and who bears a startling physical similarity to her), incarnates the simplicity of Thérèse without ever spilling over into the ethereal or the fey. In one scene, she and another sister stand side by side, gutting fish...the other sister reveals, while they work, the internal split she experiences within religious life:
mon corps est ici,mais mon esprit est ailleurs -
(My body is here, but my spirit is elsewhere.)
For Thérèse, the opposite is true: she is always intensely present in every scene, never dreaming or oblivious."
, Best Writing
, and Best Editing
. The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival
. Catherine Mouchet
won the César Award for Most Promising Actress
for 1987 for her performance.
.
's account of Thérèse's joy in her vocation is based on her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul
.
, and was introduced by Marina Warner. 'I think Thérèse is a rare and beautiful film... no film has ever before transmitted so involvingly the bliss the mystics describe of communion with God, the intense pleasure a saint like Thérèse felt at her intimacy with Jesus, the deprivation she experienced when He seemed to be absent and the comfort and affection of young women sequestered together... Cavalier's visual style, the film's restrained spectrum, its dove greys, bistres, waxy whites, recall the quiet images Gwen John
painted in Normandy of nuns reading, praying... Cavalier scans the properties of convent life... He has learned from Robert Bresson
how to linger on an image, how to give symbolic intensity to humdrum objects, by isolating them in the frame, and gentle repetition.'
In The New Yorker
the critic Pauline Kael
wrote that - " Watching Thérèse is like looking at a book of photographs of respectfully staged tableaux and not being allowed to flip the pages at your own speed. You have to sit there while Cavalier turns them for you, evenly, monotonously, allowing their full morbid beauty to sink in. You're trapped inside his glass bubble."
The academic Mary Bryant called the film , " by far the most effective and challenging rendering of the Thérèse-event in the decade leading up to Thérèse's centenary year in 1997." "Alain Cavalier was careful at pre-production stage to immerse himself not only in data, but also in visual and atmospheric detail. His film is a beautifully lit evocation of the stylised poverty of Carmel, which is like that which we now associate with Shaker furniture and interiors. Although Cavalier did visit the Lisieux Carmel, and spoke to the sisters there, the film was not shot on location there, and makes no attempt to reproduce the recognisable architecture of that monastery. Instead it focuses upon faces in spaces, intensity within enclosure, as in the late plays of Samuel Beckett
. There are no exterior shots at all in the film; instead , the presence of an extra-monastic world is conveyed obliquely, by the background cooing of a wood pigeon, or by the green, pulsating body of a tiny crouching frog, cupped in the hand of an infirmarian, and brought in to give pleasure to the dying Thérèse."
"The actress Catherine Mouchet, who plays Thérèse ( and who bears a startling physical similarity to her), incarnates the simplicity of Thérèse without ever spilling over into the ethereal or the fey. In one scene, she and another sister stand side by side, gutting fish...the other sister reveals, while they work, the internal split she experiences within religious life:
mon corps est ici,mais mon esprit est ailleurs -
(My body is here, but my spirit is elsewhere.)
For Thérèse, the opposite is true: she is always intensely present in every scene, never dreaming or oblivious."
, Best Writing
, and Best Editing
. The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival
. Catherine Mouchet
won the César Award for Most Promising Actress
for 1987 for her performance.
.
's account of Thérèse's joy in her vocation is based on her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul
.
, and was introduced by Marina Warner. 'I think Thérèse is a rare and beautiful film... no film has ever before transmitted so involvingly the bliss the mystics describe of communion with God, the intense pleasure a saint like Thérèse felt at her intimacy with Jesus, the deprivation she experienced when He seemed to be absent and the comfort and affection of young women sequestered together... Cavalier's visual style, the film's restrained spectrum, its dove greys, bistres, waxy whites, recall the quiet images Gwen John
painted in Normandy of nuns reading, praying... Cavalier scans the properties of convent life... He has learned from Robert Bresson
how to linger on an image, how to give symbolic intensity to humdrum objects, by isolating them in the frame, and gentle repetition.'
In The New Yorker
the critic Pauline Kael
wrote that - " Watching Thérèse is like looking at a book of photographs of respectfully staged tableaux and not being allowed to flip the pages at your own speed. You have to sit there while Cavalier turns them for you, evenly, monotonously, allowing their full morbid beauty to sink in. You're trapped inside his glass bubble."
The academic Mary Bryant called the film , " by far the most effective and challenging rendering of the Thérèse-event in the decade leading up to Thérèse's centenary year in 1997." "Alain Cavalier was careful at pre-production stage to immerse himself not only in data, but also in visual and atmospheric detail. His film is a beautifully lit evocation of the stylised poverty of Carmel, which is like that which we now associate with Shaker furniture and interiors. Although Cavalier did visit the Lisieux Carmel, and spoke to the sisters there, the film was not shot on location there, and makes no attempt to reproduce the recognisable architecture of that monastery. Instead it focuses upon faces in spaces, intensity within enclosure, as in the late plays of Samuel Beckett
. There are no exterior shots at all in the film; instead , the presence of an extra-monastic world is conveyed obliquely, by the background cooing of a wood pigeon, or by the green, pulsating body of a tiny crouching frog, cupped in the hand of an infirmarian, and brought in to give pleasure to the dying Thérèse."
"The actress Catherine Mouchet, who plays Thérèse ( and who bears a startling physical similarity to her), incarnates the simplicity of Thérèse without ever spilling over into the ethereal or the fey. In one scene, she and another sister stand side by side, gutting fish...the other sister reveals, while they work, the internal split she experiences within religious life:
mon corps est ici,mais mon esprit est ailleurs -
(My body is here, but my spirit is elsewhere.)
For Thérèse, the opposite is true: she is always intensely present in every scene, never dreaming or oblivious."
, Best Writing
, and Best Editing
. The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival
. Catherine Mouchet
won the César Award for Most Promising Actress
for 1987 for her performance.
Alain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier is a French film director. He was born in Vendôme, Loir-et-Cher and studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He won several awards, including the César Award for Best Film and César Award for Best Director for his film Thérèse in 1987...
.
Synopsis
Like two of her older sisters before her, Thérèse Martin is determined to become a Carmelite nun even though she is officially too young to enter the order. Thérèse's stubborn piety wins through, and her love affair with Jesus transfigures her short life. Alain CavalierAlain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier is a French film director. He was born in Vendôme, Loir-et-Cher and studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He won several awards, including the César Award for Best Film and César Award for Best Director for his film Thérèse in 1987...
's account of Thérèse's joy in her vocation is based on her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul
The Story of a Soul
The Story of a Soul is the autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first published on September 30, 1898, a year to the day after her death from tuberculosis at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897...
.
Critical responses
The film was first shown on British television in 1987 on a nun-themed film evening, with Black NarcissusBlack Narcissus
Black Narcissus is a 1947 film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden...
, and was introduced by Marina Warner. 'I think Thérèse is a rare and beautiful film... no film has ever before transmitted so involvingly the bliss the mystics describe of communion with God, the intense pleasure a saint like Thérèse felt at her intimacy with Jesus, the deprivation she experienced when He seemed to be absent and the comfort and affection of young women sequestered together... Cavalier's visual style, the film's restrained spectrum, its dove greys, bistres, waxy whites, recall the quiet images Gwen John
Gwen John
Gwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. She is noted for her still lifes and for her portraits, especially of anonymous female sitters...
painted in Normandy of nuns reading, praying... Cavalier scans the properties of convent life... He has learned from Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
how to linger on an image, how to give symbolic intensity to humdrum objects, by isolating them in the frame, and gentle repetition.'
In The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
the critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
wrote that - " Watching Thérèse is like looking at a book of photographs of respectfully staged tableaux and not being allowed to flip the pages at your own speed. You have to sit there while Cavalier turns them for you, evenly, monotonously, allowing their full morbid beauty to sink in. You're trapped inside his glass bubble."
The academic Mary Bryant called the film , " by far the most effective and challenging rendering of the Thérèse-event in the decade leading up to Thérèse's centenary year in 1997." "Alain Cavalier was careful at pre-production stage to immerse himself not only in data, but also in visual and atmospheric detail. His film is a beautifully lit evocation of the stylised poverty of Carmel, which is like that which we now associate with Shaker furniture and interiors. Although Cavalier did visit the Lisieux Carmel, and spoke to the sisters there, the film was not shot on location there, and makes no attempt to reproduce the recognisable architecture of that monastery. Instead it focuses upon faces in spaces, intensity within enclosure, as in the late plays of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. There are no exterior shots at all in the film; instead , the presence of an extra-monastic world is conveyed obliquely, by the background cooing of a wood pigeon, or by the green, pulsating body of a tiny crouching frog, cupped in the hand of an infirmarian, and brought in to give pleasure to the dying Thérèse."
"The actress Catherine Mouchet, who plays Thérèse ( and who bears a startling physical similarity to her), incarnates the simplicity of Thérèse without ever spilling over into the ethereal or the fey. In one scene, she and another sister stand side by side, gutting fish...the other sister reveals, while they work, the internal split she experiences within religious life:
mon corps est ici,mais mon esprit est ailleurs -
(My body is here, but my spirit is elsewhere.)
For Thérèse, the opposite is true: she is always intensely present in every scene, never dreaming or oblivious."
Cast
- Catherine MouchetCatherine MouchetCatherine Mouchet is a French actress. She studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, following the courses of Jacques Lassalle and Claude Régy. She is best known for her portrayal of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the film Thérèse directed by Alain Cavalier...
......... Thérèse Martin - Aurore Prieto ................. Céline Martin
- Sylvie Habault ................ Pauline Martin
- Ghislaine Mona .............. Marie Martin
- Hélène Alexandridis ........ Lucie
- Clémence Massart ......... Prioress
- Nathalie Bernart ............. Aimée
- Jean Pelegri .................. Bishop
- Armand Meppiel ............. Pope Leo XIII
- Pierre Maintigneux ......... Convent Doctor
- Joël Lefrançois .............. Young Doctor
- Beatrice de Vigan .......... Singer
Awards
It won the 1987 César Awards for Best FilmCésar Award for Best Film
The winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Film .-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:...
, Best Writing
César Award for Best Writing
This is the list of winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Writing .-1975–1979:*1975: Bertrand Tavernier, Jean Aurenche: Que la fête commence...
, and Best Editing
César Award for Best Editing
The César Award for Best Editing is one of the annual César Awards given by the French Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema. Eligible films are usually in the French language.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:...
. The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival
1986 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Sydney Pollack*Alexandre Mnouchkine*Alexandre Trauner*Charles Aznavour*Danièle Thompson*István Szabó*Lino Brocka*Philip French*Sonia Braga*Tonino Delli Colli-Feature film competition:* After Hours by Martin Scorsese...
. Catherine Mouchet
Catherine Mouchet
Catherine Mouchet is a French actress. She studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, following the courses of Jacques Lassalle and Claude Régy. She is best known for her portrayal of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the film Thérèse directed by Alain Cavalier...
won the César Award for Most Promising Actress
César Award for Most Promising Actress
The following is the list of winners of the César Award for Most Promising Actress . Since its inception in 1983, the award is given as part of the French film industry's annual César Awards....
for 1987 for her performance.
External links
Thérèse is a film about the life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first released in 1986 and directed by Alain CavalierAlain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier is a French film director. He was born in Vendôme, Loir-et-Cher and studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He won several awards, including the César Award for Best Film and César Award for Best Director for his film Thérèse in 1987...
.
Synopsis
Like two of her older sisters before her, Thérèse Martin is determined to become a Carmelite nun even though she is officially too young to enter the order. Thérèse's stubborn piety wins through, and her love affair with Jesus transfigures her short life. Alain CavalierAlain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier is a French film director. He was born in Vendôme, Loir-et-Cher and studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He won several awards, including the César Award for Best Film and César Award for Best Director for his film Thérèse in 1987...
's account of Thérèse's joy in her vocation is based on her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul
The Story of a Soul
The Story of a Soul is the autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first published on September 30, 1898, a year to the day after her death from tuberculosis at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897...
.
Critical responses
The film was first shown on British television in 1987 on a nun-themed film evening, with Black NarcissusBlack Narcissus
Black Narcissus is a 1947 film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden...
, and was introduced by Marina Warner. 'I think Thérèse is a rare and beautiful film... no film has ever before transmitted so involvingly the bliss the mystics describe of communion with God, the intense pleasure a saint like Thérèse felt at her intimacy with Jesus, the deprivation she experienced when He seemed to be absent and the comfort and affection of young women sequestered together... Cavalier's visual style, the film's restrained spectrum, its dove greys, bistres, waxy whites, recall the quiet images Gwen John
Gwen John
Gwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. She is noted for her still lifes and for her portraits, especially of anonymous female sitters...
painted in Normandy of nuns reading, praying... Cavalier scans the properties of convent life... He has learned from Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
how to linger on an image, how to give symbolic intensity to humdrum objects, by isolating them in the frame, and gentle repetition.'
In The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
the critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
wrote that - " Watching Thérèse is like looking at a book of photographs of respectfully staged tableaux and not being allowed to flip the pages at your own speed. You have to sit there while Cavalier turns them for you, evenly, monotonously, allowing their full morbid beauty to sink in. You're trapped inside his glass bubble."
The academic Mary Bryant called the film , " by far the most effective and challenging rendering of the Thérèse-event in the decade leading up to Thérèse's centenary year in 1997." "Alain Cavalier was careful at pre-production stage to immerse himself not only in data, but also in visual and atmospheric detail. His film is a beautifully lit evocation of the stylised poverty of Carmel, which is like that which we now associate with Shaker furniture and interiors. Although Cavalier did visit the Lisieux Carmel, and spoke to the sisters there, the film was not shot on location there, and makes no attempt to reproduce the recognisable architecture of that monastery. Instead it focuses upon faces in spaces, intensity within enclosure, as in the late plays of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. There are no exterior shots at all in the film; instead , the presence of an extra-monastic world is conveyed obliquely, by the background cooing of a wood pigeon, or by the green, pulsating body of a tiny crouching frog, cupped in the hand of an infirmarian, and brought in to give pleasure to the dying Thérèse."
"The actress Catherine Mouchet, who plays Thérèse ( and who bears a startling physical similarity to her), incarnates the simplicity of Thérèse without ever spilling over into the ethereal or the fey. In one scene, she and another sister stand side by side, gutting fish...the other sister reveals, while they work, the internal split she experiences within religious life:
mon corps est ici,mais mon esprit est ailleurs -
(My body is here, but my spirit is elsewhere.)
For Thérèse, the opposite is true: she is always intensely present in every scene, never dreaming or oblivious."
Cast
- Catherine MouchetCatherine MouchetCatherine Mouchet is a French actress. She studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, following the courses of Jacques Lassalle and Claude Régy. She is best known for her portrayal of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the film Thérèse directed by Alain Cavalier...
......... Thérèse Martin - Aurore Prieto ................. Céline Martin
- Sylvie Habault ................ Pauline Martin
- Ghislaine Mona .............. Marie Martin
- Hélène Alexandridis ........ Lucie
- Clémence Massart ......... Prioress
- Nathalie Bernart ............. Aimée
- Jean Pelegri .................. Bishop
- Armand Meppiel ............. Pope Leo XIII
- Pierre Maintigneux ......... Convent Doctor
- Joël Lefrançois .............. Young Doctor
- Beatrice de Vigan .......... Singer
Awards
It won the 1987 César Awards for Best FilmCésar Award for Best Film
The winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Film .-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:...
, Best Writing
César Award for Best Writing
This is the list of winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Writing .-1975–1979:*1975: Bertrand Tavernier, Jean Aurenche: Que la fête commence...
, and Best Editing
César Award for Best Editing
The César Award for Best Editing is one of the annual César Awards given by the French Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema. Eligible films are usually in the French language.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:...
. The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival
1986 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Sydney Pollack*Alexandre Mnouchkine*Alexandre Trauner*Charles Aznavour*Danièle Thompson*István Szabó*Lino Brocka*Philip French*Sonia Braga*Tonino Delli Colli-Feature film competition:* After Hours by Martin Scorsese...
. Catherine Mouchet
Catherine Mouchet
Catherine Mouchet is a French actress. She studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, following the courses of Jacques Lassalle and Claude Régy. She is best known for her portrayal of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the film Thérèse directed by Alain Cavalier...
won the César Award for Most Promising Actress
César Award for Most Promising Actress
The following is the list of winners of the César Award for Most Promising Actress . Since its inception in 1983, the award is given as part of the French film industry's annual César Awards....
for 1987 for her performance.
External links
Thérèse is a film about the life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first released in 1986 and directed by Alain CavalierAlain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier is a French film director. He was born in Vendôme, Loir-et-Cher and studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He won several awards, including the César Award for Best Film and César Award for Best Director for his film Thérèse in 1987...
.
Synopsis
Like two of her older sisters before her, Thérèse Martin is determined to become a Carmelite nun even though she is officially too young to enter the order. Thérèse's stubborn piety wins through, and her love affair with Jesus transfigures her short life. Alain CavalierAlain Cavalier
Alain Cavalier is a French film director. He was born in Vendôme, Loir-et-Cher and studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He won several awards, including the César Award for Best Film and César Award for Best Director for his film Thérèse in 1987...
's account of Thérèse's joy in her vocation is based on her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul
The Story of a Soul
The Story of a Soul is the autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first published on September 30, 1898, a year to the day after her death from tuberculosis at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897...
.
Critical responses
The film was first shown on British television in 1987 on a nun-themed film evening, with Black NarcissusBlack Narcissus
Black Narcissus is a 1947 film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden...
, and was introduced by Marina Warner. 'I think Thérèse is a rare and beautiful film... no film has ever before transmitted so involvingly the bliss the mystics describe of communion with God, the intense pleasure a saint like Thérèse felt at her intimacy with Jesus, the deprivation she experienced when He seemed to be absent and the comfort and affection of young women sequestered together... Cavalier's visual style, the film's restrained spectrum, its dove greys, bistres, waxy whites, recall the quiet images Gwen John
Gwen John
Gwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. She is noted for her still lifes and for her portraits, especially of anonymous female sitters...
painted in Normandy of nuns reading, praying... Cavalier scans the properties of convent life... He has learned from Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
how to linger on an image, how to give symbolic intensity to humdrum objects, by isolating them in the frame, and gentle repetition.'
In The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
the critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
wrote that - " Watching Thérèse is like looking at a book of photographs of respectfully staged tableaux and not being allowed to flip the pages at your own speed. You have to sit there while Cavalier turns them for you, evenly, monotonously, allowing their full morbid beauty to sink in. You're trapped inside his glass bubble."
The academic Mary Bryant called the film , " by far the most effective and challenging rendering of the Thérèse-event in the decade leading up to Thérèse's centenary year in 1997." "Alain Cavalier was careful at pre-production stage to immerse himself not only in data, but also in visual and atmospheric detail. His film is a beautifully lit evocation of the stylised poverty of Carmel, which is like that which we now associate with Shaker furniture and interiors. Although Cavalier did visit the Lisieux Carmel, and spoke to the sisters there, the film was not shot on location there, and makes no attempt to reproduce the recognisable architecture of that monastery. Instead it focuses upon faces in spaces, intensity within enclosure, as in the late plays of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. There are no exterior shots at all in the film; instead , the presence of an extra-monastic world is conveyed obliquely, by the background cooing of a wood pigeon, or by the green, pulsating body of a tiny crouching frog, cupped in the hand of an infirmarian, and brought in to give pleasure to the dying Thérèse."
"The actress Catherine Mouchet, who plays Thérèse ( and who bears a startling physical similarity to her), incarnates the simplicity of Thérèse without ever spilling over into the ethereal or the fey. In one scene, she and another sister stand side by side, gutting fish...the other sister reveals, while they work, the internal split she experiences within religious life:
mon corps est ici,mais mon esprit est ailleurs -
(My body is here, but my spirit is elsewhere.)
For Thérèse, the opposite is true: she is always intensely present in every scene, never dreaming or oblivious."
Cast
- Catherine MouchetCatherine MouchetCatherine Mouchet is a French actress. She studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, following the courses of Jacques Lassalle and Claude Régy. She is best known for her portrayal of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the film Thérèse directed by Alain Cavalier...
......... Thérèse Martin - Aurore Prieto ................. Céline Martin
- Sylvie Habault ................ Pauline Martin
- Ghislaine Mona .............. Marie Martin
- Hélène Alexandridis ........ Lucie
- Clémence Massart ......... Prioress
- Nathalie Bernart ............. Aimée
- Jean Pelegri .................. Bishop
- Armand Meppiel ............. Pope Leo XIII
- Pierre Maintigneux ......... Convent Doctor
- Joël Lefrançois .............. Young Doctor
- Beatrice de Vigan .......... Singer
Awards
It won the 1987 César Awards for Best FilmCésar Award for Best Film
The winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Film .-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:...
, Best Writing
César Award for Best Writing
This is the list of winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Writing .-1975–1979:*1975: Bertrand Tavernier, Jean Aurenche: Que la fête commence...
, and Best Editing
César Award for Best Editing
The César Award for Best Editing is one of the annual César Awards given by the French Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema. Eligible films are usually in the French language.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:...
. The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival
1986 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Sydney Pollack*Alexandre Mnouchkine*Alexandre Trauner*Charles Aznavour*Danièle Thompson*István Szabó*Lino Brocka*Philip French*Sonia Braga*Tonino Delli Colli-Feature film competition:* After Hours by Martin Scorsese...
. Catherine Mouchet
Catherine Mouchet
Catherine Mouchet is a French actress. She studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, following the courses of Jacques Lassalle and Claude Régy. She is best known for her portrayal of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the film Thérèse directed by Alain Cavalier...
won the César Award for Most Promising Actress
César Award for Most Promising Actress
The following is the list of winners of the César Award for Most Promising Actress . Since its inception in 1983, the award is given as part of the French film industry's annual César Awards....
for 1987 for her performance.