Chrissie doesn’t want a miracle. She doesn’t need one. She’s come back to this Dublin neighborhood for just one reason: to bury her dead mother. To bury the past.
But Chrissie’s Irish past—even after 40 years—is disturbingly spritely.
She finds that past at the parish talent show—one where tickets to the miraculous waters at Lourdes are on the line.
She sees Eileen, her one-time best friend, belting out a hit by The Chiffons in a ridiculously floral dress.
He’s so fine … Wish he were mine …
Lily Fox is onstage, too, singing backup to Eileen, with a woman in her 20s.
Do-lang, do-lang, do-lang …
Lily must be in her 80s, right? And yet, she’s dancing and waving her hands in the air like a pruned-up child. Imagine. What some people won’t do for a miracle.
Chrissie watches them and remembers her own life from 40 years ago. When Chrissie and Eileen were inseparable. When Lily just might’ve become Chrissie’s mother-in-law. Before—
No, those memories are too old, too painful. Chrissie’s here to bury it all and never come back.
But Chrissie’s mother—even when safely in the ground—isn’t quite gone. She leaves Chrissie a note, in care of Lily. “In case you came home,” Lily practically spits. And in that note, Chrissie reads … tenderness? Tenderness 40 years too late, but it’s there all the same.
There’s something else: a voucher to Lourdes. Apparently, she’d planned to go to that holy place, too. With her friends.
“I think she’d like you to go in her place,” Father Dermot Byrne, the parish priest, tells her.
Chrissie doesn’t need a miracle. But closure? Yeah, she’d like a little of that. And maybe, just maybe, fulfilling her mother’s dying wish might give her exactly that.
Even if she’s making the trip with a two cranky, spiteful, and unforgiving old friends.
[Editor’s Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections.]
Both Lily and Eileen can indeed be a little cranky. But Chrissie doesn’t give either of them enough credit. Both are actually trying to help Dolly—the twentysomething woman singing backup with Lily. Dolly’s son (Daniel, who’s about 7 years old or so) doesn’t talk. He’s never talked. And while there doesn’t seem to be anything else the matter with the kid, Dolly feels like their family could use a miracle. She wants to hear Daniel speak. And for their part, Eileen and Lily feel a deep attachment to Dolly and her son.
But Chrissie develops her own attachment to Dolly and Daniel—and they to her. Chrissie’s kind and patient, and sometimes she sits right down on the floor with the boy to have a heart-to-heart talk.
Perhaps it’s through Daniel that the women begin to see each other slightly differently. Sure, bridging a 40-year-old gap isn’t easy; it takes time, and it takes more than a quiet little boy to heal the rifts. But Daniel does help these ladies to move toward wanting to reconcile—and that is a minor miracle in itself.
By the end of the film, we see that process of reconciliation well underway, elements of which we’ll deal with in later sections.
Another minor miracle? The change in attitudes we see in the husbands left behind. Eileen’s trip to Lourdes, especially, seems to pay dividends at home. Her lay-about husband is forced to cook and care for their six kids and, in so doing, develops a much stronger sense of appreciation for his overworked spouse. And while she’s at Lourdes, Eileen realizes how much she misses her kids and—shocker—her husband, too.
The plot of The Miracle Club revolves around Lourdes, France, and the miracles reputed to have taken place there since the 19th century.
In 1858, Mary, the mother of Jesus, allegedly appeared to Bernadette Soubirous outside a grotto near Lourdes. Mary asked that a chapel be built in the grotto (which was done), and Bernadette soon became a nun. The waters in said grotto became world famous for their alleged power to heal.
We see the grotto where pilgrims immerse themselves in the holy water there—hoping, often, for a miraculous cure. Lily and Eileen both go as apparently devout believers in those miracles. And when we see the famous statue of Mary in a rocky alcove, both women marvel that she picked such a nice, convenient place to appear—that is, in the alcove itself. When Lily worries about catching something in those miraculous waters, Eileen insists that communicable diseases aren’t present in them. “It’s another miracle at Lourdes,” she says.
But the truth they find is more complex.
Both of the women are a little appalled at the commercialism that surrounds the chapel. (Eileen grumbles that Jesus Himself hated that sort of thing, as proven by His throwing out all the merchants and moneychangers in the temple.)
Both were under the impression that miracles were as commonplace at Lourdes as buttered toast in the hotel; when they discover that just 62 people have been verifiably healed there—not in a day, but since 1858—Eileen declares the whole thing a scam. (The film takes place in the late 1960s; the official, verified miracle count recognized by the Catholic Church now sits at 70, though thousands more unofficially credit the site with miraculous healing as well.) And it seems that her disillusionment isn’t sequestered to Lourdes, but it perhaps extends—at least initially—to Catholicism and Christianity itself.
Lily admits that her own faith was rocked long before, when her son died in a drowning accident. (In an obvious biblical echo, she refers to Declan as “my son, my only son” at one point.) Lily thinks that God punished her by taking her boy away, and she admits that she hasn’t “properly” believed since then. Despite that doubt, though, she says, “There’s always hope, isn’t there? Even when you don’t completely believe.”
Chrissie, meanwhile, seems like a skeptic. She knows that her mother embraced her Catholic faith wholeheartedly and believed in “all the hocus pocus.” When she asks Father Dermot whether he actually believes that Mary visited Lourdes, the priest says he does—but he suggests that perhaps it’s not that important whether she did or not.
We see plenty of religious symbols and icons; we watch as people dip themselves in the grotto’s sacred waters (covered in towels), helped by nuns. One man (who had been in a wheelchair) dashes out of the grotto on his own two feet, and Eileen tries to usher their little party into the pools quickly, before the magic ebbs away. (She’s later told that it was a false alarm—a common occurrence, the nuns suggest.) Chrissie and Father Dermot talk inside an impressive church. Chrissie’s mom (Maureen) signs off her last note to Chrissie with “God bless.” At her funeral, Father Dermot reads Revelation 21:3-4. Maureen is referred to as a “saint.” There are references to Christ’s suffering and death.
Women grouse over the size of the hotel’s breakfasts. “Must be what it’s like in a convent,” one muses.
The Miracle Club slowly unpacks what sent Chrissie away from Dublin for 40 years, and it comes down to her relationship with Lily’s son, Declan.
Declan got 17-year-old Chrissie pregnant. It could’ve been a scandal in that 1920s conservative Catholic enclave, and one that was hushed up when Chrissie’s mother hustled her daughter off to the States. (“Banished,” Chrissie says.) And that was that.
Characters here seem to have a strong commitment to marriage—but man, some of those marriages feel pretty dysfunctional. Both Dolly and Eileen’s husbands forbid their wives to go to Lourdes. Remember, it’s the late 1960s; for the men left behind, the idea of cooking and caring for children is almost beyond their comprehension. But the women go anyway; when they return, they discover their husbands’ attitudes are much improved.
Eileen’s husband is partly worried about Eileen spending time with Father Dermot. “You’re not going on any vacation in the French Riviera with Father-too-good-looking-for-his-own-bleeding-good,” he says.
We see women walk into the baths at Lourdes draped in towels, exposing shoulders. Eileen hints at how jealous she was of Chrissie and Declan’s relationship, and she suggests that Chrissie’s now trying to seduce Father Dermot. An old man wearing only a towel around his middle makes a dash through the grotto. We hear a reference to “shagging.”
I mentioned that we’d be spoiling some elements of the movie throughout the review, but I’d like to give a special spoiler warning here. And perhaps a trigger warning, too.
The Miracle Club deals with unwanted pregnancies. Abortion in the women’s native Ireland was unthinkable in that era. And we learn that Dolly didn’t want Daniel, and she tried to force a miscarriage. She blames herself for Daniel’s inability (or unwillingness) to talk, even though her method couldn’t have harmed him in the womb.
Eileen, a mother of six children, confesses that she also tried to miscarry several times. “I threw meself down the stairs more times than I had hot dinners,” she says, adding that she’s happy they all “came out the same way.”
She suspects that Chrissie aborted her and Declan’s baby when she arrived in the States; and she sings a biting, bloody song during a communal gathering to make her suspicions clear. Turns out, those suspicions were well founded. Chrissie finally, painfully confesses to have had the procedure, which included a tub of boiling water.
We learn early on that Declan died in a drowning “accident,” but many believe he actually committed suicide. While Eileen mistakenly blames Chrissie, Lily blames herself: “I destroyed him as sure as I gave him life,” she says.
We hear screams in the Lourdes chapel. Some people initially think someone’s dying, but it turns out it’s just because the water’s so cold. Lily deals with a painful leg, necessitating a temporary move to a wheelchair. We learn that Eileen is secretly worrying about a lump in her breast.
We don’t hear the f-word, exactly—but we do hear an Irish equivalent that sounds awfully close. Variations on the s-word are heard twice, along with more British-centric profanities such as “b–locks” and “bloody.” We hear “a–,” “h—” and a handful of misuses of both God’s and Jesus’ name (some of which feel a bit ambiguous).
Characters imbibe wine and other drinks one evening. Eileen seems to get drunk—which loosens her tongue and, in so doing, offends many. Someone pours liquor into her orange juice. Lily and Eileen smoke as well.
As mentioned, both Dolly’s and Eileen’s husbands forbid their wives to go to Lourdes. Dolly stands up to her husband and says she’s going anyway—even though her hubby tells her not to come back if she walks out the door. (He clearly has a change of heart during her absence, though.)
Meanwhile, Eileen essentially escapes through a bit of subterfuge: Lily makes it look as though her toilet’s leaking. And when Eileen’s husband (a plumber) comes to look at it, Eileen secrets out of the house and boards the bus.
When Dolly’s gone, her husband tries to put a diaper on their young toddler. But when the kid toddles off, we see a string of bathroom-oriented mess trailing behind him, and an only partly attached diaper.
“You don’t go to Lourdes for the miracle, Eileen,” Father Declan says. “You go for the strength to go on when there is no miracle.”
And yet, The Miracle Club is ultimately filled with them. Small ones, perhaps. Miracles that secular types like Chrissie could pass off as something less. Still, something significant happens for most every character in the movie. No one’s crippled legs are repaired, no bothersome lumps disappear. But the waters are the site of real healing—healing that, perhaps, every single recipient would’ve said beforehand would be impossible.
In that same ambiguous way, The Miracle Club isn’t a Christian movie. And yet it is. It’s about the power of confession, the necessity of forgiveness, the beauty of offering a little grace in a fallen world. And while I’m not sure we could definitively point to any of the women we see here and say, “Now, that’s a good Christian,” the imperfect, frail, fractured faith we see on display here may feel familiar to many watching.
The Miracle Club certainly has some problematic profanity. And how the story addresses the subject of unwanted pregnancies can be difficult to hear and hard to parse. A pro-choice advocate might point to these women and argue how shameful it was that legal, safe abortion wasn’t available to these women, how much easier their lives would’ve been if it was.
But the stories these women tell aren’t as clear cut. We see the tears in Chrissie’s eyes as she confesses her own long-held secret; the joy others have in their own children who, at least at first, were unwanted. And the film serves as a reminder to those of us in the pro-life camp, too: how difficult it can be to face an unexpected pregnancy; how deeply women need help and community and compassion around them during and after that time.
Anchored by an A-list roster of stars (Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates and Laura Linney have enough Oscars and Emmys among them to fill a compact car), The Miracle Club is an effective, if sometimes sentimental, movie that comes with some strong, positive messages. Like the Lourdes waters the women visit, it’s far from perfect. But it holds a little bit of hope anyway.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
