Summary
Period drama starring Pauline Etienne and Isabelle Huppert.
Period drama starring Pauline Etienne and Isabelle Huppert.
A teenage girl is forced to remain in a convent in this adaptation of Denis Diderot's infamous, anti-clerical 18th-century novel. The misfortune of Suzanne (Pauline Etienne) is that her cash-strapped aristocratic parents have exhausted their coffers paying for the dowries of her older sisters, so holy orders are the solution, though Suzanne soon finds her faith shaken by the rituals and hypocrisy she encounters behind the high walls. While Jacques Rivette's 1965 version of the same story (La Religieuse) was initially suppressed by the Catholic Church in France, this update by Gallic journeyman Guillaume Nicloux is unlikely to cause a stir. It's a generally classy yet dramatically underpowered affair traversing a steady path between respectable costume drama and habit-lifting exploitation. Etienne acquits herself well in the lead though, and her journey from spiritual ambivalence towards outright rebellion keeps the story on track. Even so, she is outshone by the late arrival of Isabelle Huppert as a sinister Mother Superior with some very worldly obsessions.
role | name |
---|---|
Suzanne Simonin | Pauline Etienne |
Supérieure Saint-Eutrope | Isabelle Huppert |
Supérieure Christine | Louise Bourgoin |
Madame Simonin, mère de Suzanne | Martina Gedeck |
Madame de Moni | Françoise Lebrun |
Soeur Thérèse | Agathe Bonitzer |
Soeur Ursule | Alice de Lencquesaing |
Père de Suzanne | Gilles Cohen |
role | name |
---|---|
Director | Guillaume Nicloux |