Agnes of God (1985)

Directed by Norman Jewison. Starring Jane Fonda, Meg Tilly, Anne Bancroft, Gratien Gélinas, Winston Rekert, Anne Pitoniak, Gabriel Arcand, Guy Hoffman, Françoise Faucher. [PG-13]

A potentially arresting mystery/drama becomes a tedious muddle that can’t figure out what questions it wants to ask or what answers it wants to give. Fonda sorts through a package deal of by-the-book character details (agnostic, cynic, lapsed Catholic, chain-smoker, etc.) while playing an unconvincing psychiatrist assigned to probe the mind of a young nun (Tilly) who gave birth to a baby that was subsequently snuffed out. At the convent, she butts heads with the worldly Mother Superior (Bancroft) and discovers that the wide-eyed suspect is so “innocent” as to be unaware of not only who the father is, but also of basic understanding of how procreation even works. Could this child of God, afflicted by stigmata, be a candidate for virgin birth status? Hard to say, hard to care, since the film doesn’t seem to; John Peilmeier’s script (translated from his own minimalist stage play) toys with lurid details and smug agendas, but offers no surprises, fails to seize on the conflict between seeing and believing in terms of faith and miracles and so on, and neither presents ambiguity worth debating or plain truths worth accepting. Sven Nykvist’s baroque camerawork and solid performances from Tilly and Bancroft give the pic some value, but it’s a significant disappointment that the building blocks of this story weren’t addressed in an enlightening or powerful way. Set and filmed in director Jewison’s native country of Canada.

42/100