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 . " 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 . " 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 . " It won the 1987 César Awards for Best Film , Best Writing , and Best Editing ( Isabelle Dedieu ) . The film also won the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival . Catherine Mouchet won the César Award for Most Promising Actress for 1987 for her performance
1986 Cannes Film Festival
1986 Cannes Film Festival
Thérèse (film)