Stigmata Review
By Joe Lozito
Holy Crap
The film "Stigmata" looks beautiful. Even though it always seems to be raining, the people of Pittsburgh should write director Rupert Wainwright a letter of thanks. Each frame of the film is super-saturated so the streets are wonderfully gritty, the churches comfortably candle-lit, and the cafes soothingly bathed in a warm glow. The film sounds good too, courtesy of a soundtrack by Billy Corgan of the "Smashing Pumpkins". Maybe, if there were a way to turn down the dialogue, "Stigmata" would have been worth watching.
If, instead, you bother following the plot (and good luck!) you'll find a confused amalgam of Christian lore, Vatican politics and "Exorcist" references. After punk hairdresser Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette) is given a set of rosary beads as a souvenir from her mother, she starts having violent and particularly gruesome episodes in the most inconvenient places (at work, in a club, on a subway). Doctors are at a loss to explain the holes in her wrists or the whip-lashes on her back. They think it might be self-inflicted or, perhaps, epilepsy. Yes, epilepsy.
On the other side of the spiritual coin, Gabriel Byrne plays a (get this) scientist who's a priest. Or is it a priest who's a scientist? It seems that his Father Kiernan was an organic chemist who was tired of science's unexplained questions and decided that God was the answer. The best part of the explanation for his conversion (which might have been better left unsaid) is that he doesn't understand how life started three billion years ago out of nothing. So much for Adam and Eve, I guess.
The long and short of it is that Father Kiernan believes that Frankie is receiving the wounds of Christ. In his quest to find out how a self-proclaimed atheist could be a stigmatic, he stumbles upon a Vatican conspiracy which would make Fox Mulder proud, and goes head to head with the evil Cardinal Houseman (a moustache-twirling Jonathan Pryce).
The film wants to play on the Thornbirds-style seduction of Father Kiernan. But it is never clear what he sees in Frankie since he's only around her when she's either crying or bleeding profusely (or both). Mr. Byrne religiously keeps a straight face amid all this, and Ms. Arquette actually has a little fun with Frankie before, well, there's nothing left to have fun about. Particularly silly are the scenes between Mr. Pryce and Mr. Byrne, two decidedly English gents piously chewing some Vatican-esque scenery.
The concept of a modern-day stigmatic could have been good fodder for a film, but only if the writers made it a meditation on... well... anything! Instead, what the film provides as a climax asks more questions than it answers. It's not worth going into what the conspiracy is. Suffice to say that there is a clause at the end which ventures to add some substance to the claims in the film.
There is a lot of other wasted potential in this work of Cruci-fiction. Nia Long, as Frankie's friend Donna is continually forced to ask "Are you alright?" when it is clear that Frankie is not. Enrico Colantoni, of TV's "Just Shoot Me", stands around a lot as Father Darius, Houseman's right-hand man. At least Mr. Colantoni looks Italian. And in this film, looks are all that count.
