Stigmata

3/4

Starring: Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Pryce, Nia Long

Rated R for Intense Violent Sequences, Language and Some Sexuality

What is it with thrillers where the director feels that he has to bombard the viewer with as many weird images as he can come up with and show them as fast as possible?  I know, I know, every moviegoer has ADD and every mainstream movie has to have a strong visual sense to attract a foreign audience (apparently, everyone else in the world is as subtitle-phobic as we are in the US).  Still, there are times, particularly in the first half, when director Rupert Wainwright seems to forget that he’s making a feature film, not a music video.  The montages are so fast and numerous that when the doctors were telling the protagonist that she may have epilepsy, I was worried they were talking about me.  Anyone prone to seizures should avoid this movie.

Frankie Paige (Arquette) is a hairdresser living in Philidelphia.  She’s living it large, until one night in the bathtub she starts thrashing around and ends up in the hospital with holes in her wrists.  The doctors think it was self-inflicted (it wasn’t), but Frankie is still creeped out.  When the train she’s riding on goes haywire and she is suddenly strung up and getting whipped by an invisible force, she attracts the attention of Father Andrew Kiernan (Byrne).  He thinks that she is suffering from the stigmata, the wounds of Christ.  According to him, it only happens to deeply religious people, but what’s strange is that Frankie is an atheist.

The acting is effective.  Patricia Arquette makes for a sympathetic Frankie.  She’s lively and energetic, and she can look crazed and in pain as needed (credit also must go to the makeup department).  Gabriel Byrne also does solid work, which is funny because that same year he played the Prince of Darkness in “End of Days” next to Arnold Schwartzenegger.  The two leads have good chemistry with each other which gets us involved even when we’re trying to avoid a seizure.

The film looks great, that much I’ll admit.  But there are times when it all becomes a little too much.  Wainwright could have used the “less is more” approach; he throws more images at us than is necessary to make his point.  There are also times when the movie feels more like a music video than a fictional narrative (the scenes of Frankie walking in the rain are a case in point).

Critics have attacked it as having a plot that’s unreasonably silly, and while true, it’s unfair.  Films of this nature always have ridiculous plots.  You can’t make a realistic movie like this.  The film has to get us to believe that what is happening is credible, and Wainwright does that.  He may do it in a more over-the-top fashion than is absolutely necessary, but he does it.