L’apparition (2018)

Directed by: Xavier Giannoli | 140 minutes | drama | Actors: Vincent Lindon, Galatéa Bellugi, Patrick d’Assumçao, Anatole Taubman, Elina Löwensohn, Claude Lévèque, Gérard Dessalles, Bruno Georis, Alicia Hava, Cancide Bouchet, Marie-Hélène Aubert, Aurore Broutin, Geoffroy De La Taille, Sandrine Cidney Khosta, Marc Raffray, Axelle Simon

Journalist Jacques (played by the iconic Frenchman Vincent Lindon) is sick at home, he recently lost his colleague and friend to a bomb attack on an assignment in Syria. Jacques has learned something from his hearing: a whistling sound from time to time, loss of balance and headache; he gets ear drops and has to rest. The latter is difficult for him, he wants to get back to work, and by chance — or so it seems — the Vatican asks him to investigate a report of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in a village in France. Maria would have shown herself there to a teenage girl; the village is now a place of pilgrimage for pilgrims and the girl Anna is venerated as a saint. The Vatican is losing its grip on this congregation and the worship is being exploited commercially.

In ‘L’apparition’, director Xavier Giannoli examines his own views on faith and religion in a thoroughly technological world. There is poetic beauty in the idea that thorough scientific research can prove whether a miracle is true—thus also confirming the existence of God—or not. We feel that poetry again in ‘L’apparition’, it is a beautiful, calm film, which takes us to a world in which faith and science are not only difficult, but also unusually related. Food for thought, then, beautiful images, an extremely atmospheric soundtrack, and strong acting by the actors, with special mention of emerging talent Galatéa Bellugi, who plays Anna.

In addition, ‘L’apparition’ is also a cool narration of an investigative process and intrigue. Only the form in which Giannoli casts this does not entirely benefit the intrigue, or vice versa, the intrigue does not benefit the form. ‘L’apparition’ starts strongly as an atmospheric psychological drama with undertones of a thriller, but then moves indecisively towards the denouement of Jacques’ research, which feels needlessly complicated and is half-heartedly linked to the principles with which the film starts.