Thérèse movie

The other day, my copy of Thérèse arrived from the good ol' US of A so it was time for me to take a drive down the Dover Road to that great temple of mammon, Bluewater, to get hold of a DVD player that could be hacked into being multi-region. Having checked that the cheapest one currently available had a hack available online, I was a little crestfallen to find that the shop had printed sheets with all the details. At any rate, I can now merrily play DVDs from the USA or anywhere else - which seems sensible after all.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film and will watch it again - probably with a few parishioners. However, I rather winced at one or two points; not from personal dislike but in anticipation of what I might read in the reviews; the Rotten Tomatoes page for Thérèse confirmed some of those fears.

UPDATE: I referred here to a NYT review. A commenter points out that it was a review of an earlier film. [wipes egg off face]

I would share the concern of some commentators that the movie might not give a very full picture of the Little Flower for someone who did not know much about her. I was amused by this comment from Chris Armstrong in his review of the film for Christianity Today:

As an evangelical Protestant, however, I felt as I watched this first full-length English-language film portrayal of the young lady of Lisieux that I had somehow wandered into a theater playing a foreign film without subtitles. Something was being communicated just below the surface here, I thought, in telegraphic symbols and catchphrases, but I was too dense to quite catch the deeper meaning. I felt uncomfortable, as if I sat with a sign around my neck reading "clueless Protestant."

That is a perceptive comment. At times the film operates almost as a slideshow of the saint's life and spiritual quest. Nevertheless, if you are familiar with the life of St Thérèse and have even a little devotion to her, you just can't allow it to pass by. (I got my copy via Amazon UK.)