Austrian director Jessica Hausner placidly tackles related moral paradoxes in Lourdes, a deliberately paced examination of Catholic mysticism with sharp sprinkles of magical realism. Christine (a touchingly subdued Sylvie Testud) is a paraplegic touring the titular city and its alleged healing baths with a group of nurse-chaperoned invalids who are referred to by all with a hint of tourist-y condescension as “pilgrims.” The film’s first half languidly attempts to see the world as Christine does: with patient but optimistic awe, detachedly observing ironic interactions between “normal people” from behind the icy safety of social as well as mechanical torpidity. The nurses, decked out in Red Cross colors with irresistible nun hoods, are constantly being approached, and flattered, by lascivious male attendants and priests, and as though compensating for their comparative asexuality, the patients judge one another’s potential to receive Christ’s mercy. Juxtaposed with gloriously pellucid location photography (the 19th-century basilicas and grottos glint with muscular spirituality), Hausner’s view of the sanctuary nimbly crosses numinous beatification with infantile sexuality (much like the French resort in the third act of Murmur of the Heart, where another unnatural, albeit profane, miracle of sorts occurred).