| Thérèse | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Alain Cavalier |
| Written by | |
| Produced by | Maurice Bernart |
| Starring | Catherine Mouchet |
| Edited by | Isabelle Dedieu |
Release date | May 1986 (premiere at Cannes) |
Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
Thérèse is a film about the life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first released in 1986, and directed by Alain Cavalier.
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 Cavalier's account of Thérèse's joy in her vocation is based on her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul .
The film was first shown on British television in 1987 on a nun-themed film evening, with Black Narcissus , 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."[ citation needed ]
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." [1]
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 ... 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." [2]
It won the 1987 César Awards for Best Film, Best Writing, and Best Editing (Isabelle Dedieu). [3] The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. [4] Catherine Mouchet won the César Award for Most Promising Actress for 1987 for her performance.
It was also selected by the Vatican in the "religion" category of its list of 45 "great films."
The Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, known as the Carmelites or sometimes by synecdoche known simply as Carmel, is a Roman Catholic mendicant religious order for men and women. Historical records about its origin remain very uncertain, but it was probably founded in the 12th century on Mount Carmel in the Crusader States. Berthold of Calabria has traditionally been associated with the founding of the order, but few clear records of early Carmelite history have survived. The order of Carmelite nuns was formalised in 1452.
Thérèse of Lisieux ; born Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin, 2 January 1873 – 30 September 1897), also known as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, was a French Catholic Discalced Carmelite nun who is widely venerated in modern times. She is popularly known in English as "The Little Flower of Jesus", or simply "The Little Flower", and in French as la petite Thérèse.
Carfin Lourdes Grotto, a Roman Catholic shrine in Scotland dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, was created in the early twentieth century. The "Carfin Grotto", as the shrine is locally referred to, was the brainchild of Father, later Canon Thomas N. Taylor, parish priest of St. Francis Xavier's Parish in the small, mining village of Carfin, which lies two miles east of Motherwell, in the West of Scotland. Following a trip to France's principal Marian shrine at Lourdes, Canon Taylor's vision was to build a religious memorial in honour of Our Blessed Lady based on the template of the Grotto of Massabielle. To realize this vision became his life's work. Since its opening in the early 1920s, the "grotto" has attracted pilgrims in the hundreds of thousands and its environs have been modified and enhanced with rich Catholic symbols and buildings. The grotto shrine offers a pilgrimage season with Sunday processions, rosaries, outdoor Masses and dedicated Feast Day events which run annually from early May until late September.
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower also called Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Thérèse Church is a historic Roman Catholic church, located in San Antonio, Texas, in the United States. The church is distinguished as one of 84 in the United States bearing the papal designation of "minor basilica." Despite its religious importance it is not the cathedral of the local diocese; that distinction belongs to San Fernando Cathedral.
Louise-Marie of France was a French princess and Discalced Carmelite, the youngest of the ten children of Louis XV and Maria Leszczyńska. She entered the Carmelite convent, now the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Denis, at Saint-Denis in 1770 under the name of Thérèse of Saint Augustine and served as prioress in 1773-1779 and 1785–1787. She is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church, having been declared Venerable by Pope Pius IX.
The Nun is a 1966 French drama film directed by Jacques Rivette and based on the novel of the same title by Denis Diderot.
Marie Dubois was a Parisian-born French actress.
The 12th César Awards ceremony, presented by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, honoured the best French films of 1986 and took place on 7 March 1987 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. The ceremony was chaired by Sean Connery and hosted by Michel Drucker and Pierre Tchernia. Thérèse won the award for Best Film.
Alain Cavalier is a French film director.
Catherine Mouchet is a French actress.
La Vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin, is a French film, silent, directed by Julien Duvivier, and released in 1929. It is a " stark and striking biographical account of the late 19th century Discalced Carmelite nun who died at age 24 from tuberculosis and was canonized in 1925." The film is based on the spiritual autobiography Thérèse wrote, L'Histoire d'une âme. The same material inspired Alain Cavalier's film Thérèse. "Simone Bourday has genuine adolescent fervour as Thérèse and André Marnay is pathetically fine as her father. The sequence of the taking of the veil has extraordinary documentary force." Art direction on the film was by the future director Christian-Jaque.
Robert Coin (1901–1988) is a French sculptor and engraver, born in Saint-Quentin on 17 December 1901. He died in Lille on 12 February 1988.
The National Shrine & Museum of St. Therese in Darien, Illinois is a Roman Catholic shrine dedicated to St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. The Shrine is a part of the Aylesford Carmelite campus, run by the Carmelite Order, Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary. The National Shrine & Museum of St. Therese is supported and served by the Society of the Little Flower, a religious organization dedicated to promoting devotion to St. Therese of Lisieux.
Ana de Jesús, translated into English as Anne of Jesus, was a Spanish Discalced Carmelite nun and writer. She was a close companion of Teresa of Avila, foundress of the Carmelite reform and served to establish new monasteries of the Order throughout Europe. Known as a mystic and for her writings on prayer, she has been declared Venerable by the Catholic Church.
St.Theresa Church is a Catholic church under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Madras-Mylapore (Chennai-Mylai) in Tamil Nadu, India, in Sembiam division of Perambur, Chennai. Approximately 900 families have the membership in this Catholic parish. Many people from various parts of Chennai make pilgrimage to this church for the devotion of Infant Jesus.
The Nun is a 2013 French drama film directed by Guillaume Nicloux. It is based on the 18th-century novel La Religieuse by French writer Denis Diderot. The film premiered in competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. It received two nominations at the 4th Magritte Awards, winning Best Actress for Pauline Étienne, and a nomination at the 39th César Awards. Production companies included Les Films du Worso, Belle Epoque Films and Versus Production.
Sœur Thérèse.com is a French televised legal drama that ran on TF1 from September 30, 2002, until May 16, 2011, and was created by Michel Blanc. Since June 20, 2012, the show has been broadcast on NT1 and on TV5Monde. The series was filmed partially in the Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre Church in Paris and the Royal Abbey of St. Vincent in Senlis. The series reached a peak audience of 9.9 million viewers in 2004, but it slowly began to lose viewers until its end in 2011.
Léonie Martin, also known as Sister Françoise-Thérèse, VHM, was a French Roman Catholic nun who led a cloistered life as a member of the Visitation Sisters. She was the daughter of Saints Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin Martin and an elder sister of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She is sometimes dubbed Saint Thérèse's "difficult sister". She assumed the religious name of Françoise-Thérèse.
Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie ("Zélie") Guérin Martin were a French Roman Catholic couple and the parents of five nuns, including Thérèse of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who was canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church in 1925 and Léonie Martin declared "Servant of God" in 2015. In 2015, the couple were also canonized as saints, becoming the first spouses in the church's history to be canonized as a couple.
Teodora Fracasso - in religious Elia di San Clemente - was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious from the Carmelites. Fracasso once had the name of "Agnes" during a stint in the Third Order of Saint Dominic. Fracasso's inclinations to become a nun stemmed from her childhood after having had a vision in 1911 in which Thérèse of Lisieux told her that she would become a nun; this realization came a decade later when she entered the convent in her native Bari where she remained for the remainder of her life.