LA RELIGIEUSE/ THE NUN
France, 2013, 114 minutes, Colour.
Pauline Etienne, Isabelle Huppert, Louise Bourgoin, Martina Gedeck, Francoise Lebrun.
Directed by Guillaume Nicloux.
In recent years there have been far fewer films about nuns. Priests, yes. Nuns, no. Since the Second Vatican Council, the traditional-looking nun and her convent life have changed considerably, especially in English-speaking countries.
The Nun is a French film with a Belgian leading actress, Pauline. And it is based on a novel by Enlightenment author, Francois Diderot. The setting is the 18th century, 1765, a quarter of a century before the French Revolution, a very different time and ethos, even in religious life.
The director, Guillaume Nicloux, has noted that he has removed the strong anti-clerical attitudes of the author, again a feature of the French Revolution. Diderot is anticlerical in attitude and severely critical of nuns and community life. However, in the film, a bishop with a sense of justice and a sympathetic priest come out of the film very well.
But it is a story about convent life. Suzanne has written her story and had it smuggled out of the convent to a lawyer who is to help her obtain an annulment from her vows for her to be free to leave the convent. A teenager, she had talked about serving God to help her two sisters marry. But, when she is actually placed in a convent and compelled to stay by her parents, a deep sense of dread envelops her.
Throughout the film she lives in two convents under three superiors. The first is a kindly, elderly woman, Francoise Lebrun. She wants to help Suzanne to stay and live as a nun. The other sisters, unlike those in Loudun 100 years earlier and seen in hysteric states in Ken Russell’s The Devils, seem to accept their vocation or their fate. Suzanne is persuaded to stay, to make commitments. But, at the ceremony for her profession of vows, she refuses. When the superior dies, the victim of a mentally disturbed sister, they care for, the new superior takes over. She is younger, attractive-looking, but a deadly authoritarian and wilful woman (Louise Bourgoin). She makes life a hell for Suzanne, solitude, confinement, starvation, no washing or sanitation, no confession, no communion, finally forbidding her to pray. It is mentioned that she came from the Paris convent at Port Royale, the convent in the previous century where Mere Angelique ruled with rigid Jansenist intolerance and Blaise Pascal was a resident.
Suzanne steals paper and ink and writes her story – which leads to a strip search and further humiliations and to the nuns despising her. Charity is singularly absent.
This is the time when the bishop appears, briefed by the lawyer who has received Suzanne’s story. Justice prevails, the superior is rebuked and stood down. Suzanne is transferred.
All seems sweetness and light in the new convent. However, there are immediate signals that this time the superior has sexual problems, has cast off a jealous nun in Suzanne’s favor, devoting herself and her time to Suzanne, then making sexual advances. Suzanne is dismayed, reports the superior and her behavior, but the drama and melodrama is eased and Suzanne is helped by the lawyer to escape. She does find freedom. She is able to face life.
The tyrannical superior is played by Louise and the third superior is played by Isabelle Huppert.
Decades ago Monica Baldwin wrote a memoir, I Leap Over the Wall, a story of a convent life and the difficulties in getting out. With greater discernment and fairer processes is for dispensations from vows now, this 18th century tale seems old-fashioned, a tale from the severe past. That said, the actresses, the attention to period detail, costumes and décor well re-created mean that the film is very well made and worth some attention.
1. The 21st century and interest in nuns? 20th century changes? Relevance of the issues? Or simply a re-creation of history?
2. The period film, the 18th century, aristocracy, ordinary people, clergy and religious? Society and change? authority? The anticipation of the French Revolution?
3. Francois Diderot, his novel, anti-clerical, anti-religious? The Director eliminating the anti-clericalism? The updating of the story to the mood of the
times?
4. Castles, the countryside, convents? Old, austere, the rooms, the chapel, the cellars, the steps, décor, costumes, lighting, the musical score?
5. The opening, the castle, the baron, his son’s arrival, the baron watching over Suzanne’s bed, story on the table, the son reading it?
6. The flashbacks, the three daughters, the elderly father, the young mother, the family, its lavish style, the marriage of the daughters, the financial losses, the families and the disorder? Suzanne within this context?
7. Suzanne and her story, her age, her good relationship with her sisters? Her talk of God? The convent, her parents placing her there, her wanting to leave? Impossible?
8. The situation for the family, the lack of money, her parents, confining her to the convent?
9. The first superior, elderly, kindly, Suzanne’s response to her? Life in the convent, the habit, persuaded to do the novitiate? Her pleading with the superior, relationship with the other sisters, Sister Benedict and her angry outbursts? The vows ceremony, her refusal to take the vows? The bewilderment of the priest?
10. The death of the superior and the well, Sister Benedict? The new superior, Sister Christine, beautiful, smiling, authoritarian, rueful? Spiteful? The other sisters? Suzanne defying the superior, placed in solitude, starved, her hair cut, her stealing the paper, breaking the ink bottle? The accusation, the strip-search? The humiliations, the sisters ignoring her, spitting on her? No confession, no communion, forbidden to pray? Her suffering, burning the hair shirt? Her becoming more assertive? Her being commanded to sing in the choir for the visitors?
11. Smuggling her story, the maid helping her, giving her mother’s address for the return mail? The visit of the lawyer? His offer of help? The bishop and the interrogation, just, his being shocked, standing Sister Christine down? Ordering her to be restored to health?
12. The lawyer, the issue of Rome and annulments? The refusal, her being forced to stay?
13. Her being transferred, the new superior, the welcome, the happy community, Sister Therese’s resentment and antagonism, the past favoritism, the story of the superior’s treatment of Sister Agnes? Superior, listening to Suzanne playing the piano, providing her with cakes, treating her as special, listening to her story, and the rudeness to Therese? Coming to Suzanne’s room, saying she was cold, making sexual advances, getting into the bed? Suzanne’s reactions? Going to the confessors, the charges?
14. The discussion with the priest, his message, the escape plan, his saying that he was forced into priesthood but was not a rebel?
15. Travel to the baron’s castle, the fact that he was her father, the son was her brother, her sleep, breakfast, on the balcony, a new life and freedom?
16. The story of the enclosed convents of the past, issues of freedom and dispensation, the differences in the 21st century? The portrait of a past society, church and religious life?
