A detective is told by his superior to stop putting his nose where it doesn't belong, and is eventually thrown off the case. He's become too personally involved with the particulars of his investigation, though--the sexy woman and her stalker--to drop everything on the orders of a man he doesn't respect in the first place. Why yes, I'm describing a passage from Stigmata, a film that, if nothing else, proves the cop thriller formula so dependable that it can be grafted onto, of all things, a possession yarn.
Gabriel Byrne is Father Kiernan, the cop. Employed by the Vatican to disprove miracles across the globe, he comes upon a doozy of Mary statue that cries blood at the Brazilian funeral of Pablo Alameida, a beloved priest. Patricia Arquette is Frankie Paige, the cute, soon-to-be damsel in distress, a working class Pittsburgh hairdresser; she has received a trinket in the post from her vacationing mother: Father Alameida's rosary beads. Within hours, she is mysteriously bleeding from deep cuts to both wrists. Psychiatrists grill her--looks like suicide. "I love being me!" she protests. Days later, in a subway car, Frankie suffers blackouts, and comes to with lacerations--whip marks--all over her backside. Now the doctors think she has epilepsy. So much for that job as a barber.
Lucky for Frankie, the man who can help her speaks perfect English, unlike many of his peers. And he's a dark Irish charmer, to boot. Kiernan didn't always belong to the faith: he used to be a lab geek with glasses taped at the middle. In just about the only substantial conversation he has with Frankie, Kiernan tells her he got religious when he realized he couldn't explain away certain phenomena with textbook theories. For most scientists, not knowing something encourages further research, not joining the priesthood.
Frankie may have the Stigmata, which Webster's defines as "bodily marks or pains resembling the wounds of the crucified Christ and sometimes accompanying religious ecstasy." The trouble is, she's not a pious woman, and this inexplicable bleeding is reserved for holy souls--the first documented Stigmatic is St. Francis of Assisi, Frankie's namesake. So something else might lurk inside her. Kiernan's seen it all when Frankie begins writing scripture on the wall of her apartment in a dead language, and speaking an ancient tongue in a man's voice--there's no way this ditz could be faking.
The movie plays like a Vogue apocalypse spread, all pretty pictures that have taken hours to prepare sequenced for maximum aesthetic impact. Director Rupert Wainwright is so enamoured of his images that characters rarely get to finish a passage of dialogue before he drowns them out with Billy Corgan and Elia Cmiral's pompous score--music better accompanies the poseur grit. The (hackneyed) story happens incidentally.
Arquette better combined innocence with youthful indiscretion in True Romance. Even subject to the stylistic whims of Wainwright, it's clear that she had no better idea of who Frankie is than screenwriters Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage, or how to put a new spin on the old 'pea soup vomiting devil-woman tied to the bed' routine. (Let's just say she comes a lot closer to the self-parodying Linda Blair of the Leslie Nielsen spoof Repossessed than the cherubic adolescent Blair who scared us blind in The Exorcist.) Byrne, on the other hand, radiates cool. I've been a loyal fan of his ever since Miller's Crossing, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated gangster drama; Byrne's quiet unflappability becomes iconic by film's end. Call it divine intervention: without him, Wainwright's Stigmata is just another glamorous example of doom porno.
MGM's DVD presentation is top notch, certainly a cut above their recent catalogue title reissues. Jeffrey L. Kimball's dim, grainy cinematography could be a mess in any other format; letterboxed at 2.35:1 and enhanced for widescreen televisions, Stigmata looks almost as good as Criterion's bar-raising Seven Laserdisc (on 16x9 sets, it's probably better). Here and there, shots lack shadow detail, and the film would be very annoying to sit through in a brightly lit room, but the authoring is masterful in terms of compression. The 5.1 DD audio is an outstanding complement to the video, even though it lacks fireworks from the bass channel. Stigmata is a truly immersive surround sound experience, especially during Frankie's attacks.
The British Wainwright discusses his film on another track, and his lack of artistic integrity reveals itself early on. (For instance, Father Alameida is translating Aramaic in the prologue, but "the language that you see there is actually paleo-Hebrew, because it looks a bit more interesting.") Before listening to his commentary, I did not realize that Frankie has a boyfriend, so as a guide to Stigmata, it's essential.
The disc utilizes the seamless branching feature to include an optional version of the theatrical release with one additional closing scene. Despite Wainwright's claim that this alternative Stigmata is "more emotional", I found its "Thorn Birds" intensity to be laughable at best. Other deleted bits, five in all, are available as supplemental material. Comedic highlights: "Steve Scares Frankie" is a showcase for the questionable talents of "Saved by the Bell"'s Patrick Muldoon, as Frankie's otherwise barely glimpsed beau, while "Frankie Stabs Herself" is absurdly graphic self-mutilation. Last but not least, we have the theatrical trailer (anamorphic as well), Natalie Imbruglia's "Identify" music video, and a bonus 8-page booklet chock full of fun Stigmata trivia. An A-grade package for a B-grade entertainment.-Bill Chambers
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