Named after a thirteenth-century mystic,
Hadewijch presents the spiritual journey of Céline (Julie Sokolowski), a young novice nun who is expelled because of her overzealous faith, and sent back into the world by the mother superior. As she returns to live with her parents in their sumptuous Parisian apartment, Hadewijch once again becomes Céline, the daughter of a French minister.
Here she meets Yassine, an Arab boy who introduces her to the lights of Paris, and the
cités, on the margins of the city itself. Céline’s passionate love of God, her rage, her unease with her haute-bourgeois parents, and her encounter with the volatile Yassine and more importantly his brother Nassir, a devout Muslim, leads her between grace and madness, further off along dangerous paths.
Hadewijch won the 2009 Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI ) at the Toronto Film Festival.
Toronto Film Festival: World Premiere
London Film Festival 2009: UK Premiere
★★★★
“Chilly like a church and mad as a cult, Hadewijch echoes back its pet preoccupation as reverence and gaudy plot turns. Sokolowski’s central turn and Yves Cape’s cinematography add a beatific glow to a fascinating piece of cinema.”
Tara Brady, THE IRISH TIMES
★★★★
The Arts Desk
★★★★
CAMDEN NEW JOURNAL
WEST END EXTRA
ISLINGTON TRIBUNAL
★★★★
“See it for Sokolowski, giving one of the best acted, morst purely felt performances of recent times…”
“Prickly, complex film-making.”
Mike McCahill, THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
“Dumont retains a rare vision”
Jason Solomons, MAIL ON SUNDAY
“Sticks in the mind”
Philip French, THE OBSERVER
“Exerts a strange power”
THE GUARDIAN GUIDE
“A young Parisian is expelled from a nunnery and gravitates towards Islamic fundamentalism.”
Nicholas Barber, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
‘Magnificent... an entirely hypnotic study of the possibilities and consequences that arise from an absolute belief in the love of God...Remarkable...Beautifully conceived and rigorously developed, Hadewijch speaks to the present with care and insight. ’Piers Handling,
Toronto Film Festival
'delivers a nuanced and fascinating portrait of faith...It’s a beautiful and mysterious work with a rhythm all its own.'
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
'Lucid and Startling'
Kent Turner, Film Comment
‘ a profound exploration... Every shot in the movie is an exquisitely rendered tableau that conveys the mysteries of life as contemplated by Céline.’
Stephen Holden, The New York Times
‘A remarkable, audacious film...tantalising and provocative...a multi-layered dialogue between city and country, faith and fanaticism, Catholicism and Islam, the wordly and the metaphysical – all with an economical mastery of film language, and with a rivetingly opaque central performance from newcomer Sokolowski, whose Celine is variously child, saint, ingénue and enigma’Jonathan Romney,
London Film Festival Catalogue‘Hadewijch is a movie on a quest: At once a sincere theological inquiry and a provocative political meditation.’New York Film Festival Catalogue‘Dumont draws an amazing performance out of Sokolowski in particular.’Dan Fainaru,
Screen International
'Hadewijch goes from austere images of a wintry world to remarkably beautiful images of post-rainfall lushness…from desolation to revelation, humanism becomes visible in every living thing.'
Armond White, New York Press
'In the tradition of Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson and Ingmar Bergman, Hadewijch is about the dilemma of modern spirituality.'
Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail
