"Wer's Glaubt, Wird Selig" or "St. Daisy" is a German 100-minute movie from 2012, so it has its 5th anniversary this year. The title already gives away that this is a church-themed comedy, but there is also a great deal of sex in it (not a porn obviously!), so choose your fellow audience members wisely. The director is Marcus H. Rosenmüller and he also adapted the original literary work by Jeremy Leven. The latter is mostly known from "The Notebook" and I was pretty surprised to see him attached to this project we have here. Rosenmüller's films usually have a strong South German / Bavarian background and this one is no exception. It is the story of a little town in the Alps and about the people who live there and struggle with the fact that tourists (mostly skiers) are not really visiting anymore. This is the general background here, but there are more personal problems as well, like the missing sex life of the central characters' story or the fact that one character just cannot find her significant other because of her past or that the place develops a very peculiar story about religion or the story of one character dying. Death has always been a strong subject as well in Rosenmüller's movies, but for this one here, it is all about the comedy, especially if you take a look at the circumstances of the death.
The latter is also one example where the film goes way over the top in my opinion with its attempt to be entertaining. On a side-note, this couple does not seem at all as if they weren't having sex for half a year when they did it there, but that's not the most important thing. The way Elsner's character is killed of is pretty vulgar and tasteless and I am not even a religious person at all. So I mentioned Hannelore Elsner already and she is probably the most known cast member here. Ulmen (in the lead), Schwarz, Yardim, von Thun and Potthoff may be known to German film buffs as well. And while I would not say any of these is a truly gifted actor and some of them have a tendency to play the same character every film they are in, they are all somewhat responsible for the better moments of the film too. Of course, an actor is always only as good as the script lets him be, but I think there are also more convincing moments here when the film does not sacrifice all kinds of realism for getting cheap laughs. One example would be that she is not declared a saint in the end. Sadly, the inclusion of the Pope is pretty cringeworthy too and he feels like a village priest the way he is depicted here, from the very first scene on. Other bad moments include the spirit of Elsner's character or scenes (funny again despite the heavy subject) about the reincarnation of a character who is apparently dying. So now that I think and write about it, I must say 4 stars out of 10 is pretty generous still for this mess. Then again, I have never been a big fan of Rosenmüller's works and I have see quite a few. This one fits in nicely in a negative sense and I don't recommend checking it out. Thumbs down.
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