Despite my (possibly unjustified) prejudice against movies from The Netherlands, I booked tickets anyway as the plot intrigued me. A co-reason was that it reminded me of the movie Stigmata (Rupert Wainwright 1999). I saw its DVD-version some 10 years ago. It carries a similar plot, also about a village desperately needing a miracle for a number of reasons.
Both movies demonstrate fully how difficult it is to prove or disprove a miracle. The church hierarchy has its own expectations about the best outcome of the investigation. And the villagers do not always cooperate, some of them act even unfriendly against the man sent by The Vatican. Whatever his findings, not everyone will agree.
It took me some time to get which common trauma the village had suffered previously. Located in the province of Limburg, I assumed a mining accident. My wrong, and I could have known better due to fragments of a school shooting shown relatively early in the story. I failed to connect the dots, not until much later in the story, when I learned how Térèse had been a direct witness yet escaped miraculously, unharmed for unclear reasons.
All in all, I was positively surprised with the story and its developments, sufficiently varied with unexpected turns of events. Not a chance to get bored. The ending is not exactly what I had expected, but please don't consider this a complaint (is there a better ending possible, given the ingredients?).
This movie won't exercise your Dutch language skills. There is the simple fact that when an Italian enters a Dutch village, everyone will automatically switch to English as a matter of course. The only exception is the sermon of our visitor in the local church, spoken in Italian and getting a simultaneous Dutch translation.
I'm not sure why IMDB marks this movie as a Comedy.
