抹大拉

Since the death of Jesus, Mary Magdalene has withdrawn from the world. Her hair has turned white, she eats berries, drinks rain water and sleeps among the trees. Alone in the heart of the forest, she remembers her lost love. She looks for a way to find him. — Under the rain, in the wind or in the mist, through forests and caves, little by little, one shot after the other, a deep mystery unfurls. A mystery which is as thick as the cloak that covers Mary Magdalene. Not Mary the great sinner nor the redeemed soul, but the great lover who stays loyal until the end to her passion for Christ. Is this the passion of a believer in God ? Or the one of a lover for a man ? Every cell of her body remembers their radiant encounter which has, since it happened, illuminated every single moment of her life. Damien Manivel's cinematic creation wraps a nebulous aura around its viewers. It is as ascetic in the way it treats its subject as it is sensual in the way it makes us see things. It is particularly attentive to the bodies and to the materiality of space and time, which both carries and passes through every living creature. This dusky movie propels us into a primitive mystique which has nothing to do with candles, thuribles and « Our Father Who art in heaven » prayers, and in which nature and hallucinated visions make human faith go back to its original paganism. The filmmaker and his actress Elsa Wolliaston, whose expressivity is stunning, succeed in transfiguring the character of Mary Magdalene. Together they climb up the steep slopes of Love and Faith in beauty.