Heavenly Pursuits

An engaging satire on the miracle business, set in a Catholic school in Glasgow whose status-seeking authorities are much taxed by the problem of canonisation for their patron, the Blessed Edith Semple, who died in 1917 with one authenticated miracle to her credit. She needs two more, the Vatican sternly decrees. Meanwhile a sceptical remedial teacher (Conti) is quietly performing miracles of his own with backward kids, and is as startled as anyone when a couple of bizarre circumstances intervening in his life seem to smack of the miraculous. Treated with tongue-in-cheek seriousness, the resulting confusion of cross-purposes as the media jump on the band wagon treads a delicate path through the morass of cynicism, gullibility and wishfulness. Quirkily funny and admirably acted, it works beautifully largely because Gormley (scripting as well as directing) refuses to undersell any of his characters: everybody has his reasons.