Acclaimed Polish film based on a true story in which a juvenile delinquent who has discovered a vocation for the ministry
in a type of reform school heads off to a small village in the south of the country where he “falls” into the role of a replacement priest.
Although he is only twenty, he uses sermons and prayers from his reform school time and others he googles to start conducting services and taking confession.
He also manages to make friends with many locals and gets to know of a road accident that took 7 of the villagers’ lives and which has left the village divided. In his own way he goes about trying to heal this and to bring his own angle to the blessing of buildings etc.
At the same time, he fears being caught and he still enjoys activities that are supposedly not in the realm of priests, including a relationship with the daughter of the church’s warden.
Wide-eyed Bartosz Bielenia is excellent in the lead role and ably supported by Eliza Rycembel as the girlfriend
and Aleksandra Ronieczna as her mother. Piotr Sobocinski Junior captures the mood perfectly with his photography.
Corpus Christi has a lot of food for thought and undoubtedly speaks a lot to Polish society and their ultra-religious fervor in present times. Unfortunately the subtitles for it didn’t always seem the best.
4 stars
passionfilm 