A journalist is sent by the Vatican to investigate a young girl claiming to be visited by the Virgin Mary. Read more …
Unfortunately, much of the runtime is occupied by a standard investigation whose ambiguity is as appropriate as it is frustrating, and its ill-timed release means that The Apparition arrives in cinemas too soon after First Reformed, a film which grapples with many of the same ideas in a more compelling manner.
A laconic religious procedural that maybe has too many answers.
This long film doesn’t quite succeed in being as powerful or as moving as Giannoli might have wished, due to an uncertainty about how great a role rational scepticism has to play, but it has a satisfying ending that might have pleased the veteran screenwriter and storyteller Jean-Claude Carrière.