This review originally ran September 2, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.
You’ll need to have faith in your core to be swept away by Sebastián Lelio’s lovely and elegiac “The Wonder,” a mournful and textured psychodrama that gently nurses one into hope and spiritual serenity.
But not a religious kind of faith, to be clear: You’ll just need to believe in, or at least gradually come to accept, the power of stories as a means of survival.
A deeply feminine tale of fortitude with heart and teeth, “The Wonder” (making its world premiere at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival) hints at this very suggestion right at the start — perhaps a tad too expressly — and opens on what looks like a contemporary film stage.