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Andreas (Rutger Hauer) is an alcoholic vagrant, usually sleeping under bridges and living merely from one day to the next. Then though, a stranger (Anthony Quayle) hands him 200 Francs to help him through a rough patch, with the only condition that he returns the money to Saint Thérèse at a certain church in the city whenever he's able to. This is the beginning of a stroke of luck, as Andreas (at least at first) doesn't spend the money unwisely, just on little creature comforts, like a shave and a coffee and the like, and making himself more presentable in consequence - and before he knows it he has a job that makes him 200 more Francs. Thus he plans to return the money this very Sunday - but ultimately gets so drunk in the café across the church that he misses Mass.

Fortunately for him, Andreas finds more money, and again makes big plans to return the money, even promises Saint Thérèse, who appears to him in a dream (and is played by Dalila Belateche), to do so come Sunday - but again, fate intervenes, this time in shape of a dancing girl (Sandrine Dumas) who becomes his lover for two nights and a friend (Dominique Pinon), who talks him out of the money meant for church.

Andreas gets more and more opportunities to get to money and return it, but fate has long put him on a downward spiral, and despite his most honest ambitions, he seems less and less likely to ever succeed ...

The Legend of the Holy Drinker is most certainly a very unusual film as instead of hammering home a point it combines motives both religious and profane to a multi-layered plot that slowly unfolds from a rather simplistic premise to a complex narrative that leaves many of its subplots intentionally underexplored and thus open for one's own interpretations, and that's held together by Rutger Hauer's very nuanced performance as the well-meaning but fallible drunkard and an elegant yet subtle directorial effort that manages to create a world all of its own to tell its story in.

Well worth a watch!

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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