La religiosa

I am a fan of Diderot by way of Rousseau. And his novel was interesting in the letter based structure. It quite forward thinking for its time, in that while the Enlightenment was directly challenging many statistic and institutional ideas, very few Enlightenment writers were including women in their considerations.

That said the user reviews here and especially the professional reviews are a bit overwrought as a result of leaving out context. Firstly almost all people were locked into vocation, virtually never of their own choosing, as everything about their life. Certainly married women were, and subject to control and violence that makes anything in "The Nun" pale by comparison. So too was just about anyone else for most of human history. Either overtly owned or tied to the land and their "station' and subject to warlord or state violence for for chalking that. Certainly in mid/late 18h century Nuns were eating better (no small thing in world were people regularly starved to death), were safer in almost every way than most other people, certainly than the great majority of men, who were much more likely to be inducted into the military as cannon fodder.

Again, the 1966 version is better, and better yet is the novel.

If it were up to her that is. Bad jokes aside, this is based on a novel that has already seen an incarnation (no pun intended) in movie that was made in the sixties. I can neither relate to that movie or the book, since I haven't read or watched those. But I can say that I can relate to our main character here. And who would not be able to? Being forced to do something you don't want to, is something everyone has had to go through in different variations.

I do wonder what the church is saying about this, although it's obvious that the blame goes to single persons instead of everyone. The structure is pretty neat, with someone reading what happened and us being thrown into that mix. Great sets and costumes and a very well acted (underplayed) main role. Sometimes the devil is in the detail ...

... given the age of the story - but this disappoints on other fronts as well.

Firstly, the Dickensian "let's drag everyone through misery until the deus ex machina ending" is just too well-worn for me, but could have been OK if the execution were more interesting on the way. Sadly, I was bored quite often, waiting for something to happen (or just not to see again something already well-signposted) and some of the acting (sadly including Huppert's turn here) was just not very convincing.

Ultimately, a nicely-shot but (for me) too-familiar tale of the crushing power of systems and the risks of resistance. Others may have more fun with it.

La religieuse is an interesting account of the life of the recluse who seeks a life of serenity, away from the distraction of the world only to find themselves amind cruel, pitiless and sadistic individuals who use religion and the name of God as an excuse to inflict pain on others. Prior to watching this adaptation, I have read few pages of Diderot's novel, and I can say that the movie does justice to the work, and now that I am continuing the reading, I can vividly picture the scenes of the movie, along with Pauline Etienne who gives life to the character of Suzanne Simonin, as i read through the pages.

Imagine being sent to a convent against your will. Imagine taking a religious vow in which you don't personally have faith. Imagine discovering that the treacherous currents of guilt, power, control and sex remain every bit as relevant within a nunnery as outside of it. Such is the tragic predicament in which the film's titular nun finds herself in this handsomely-shot - if not entirely well-executed - adaptation of 18th-century French philosopher Denis Diderot's controversial novel.

With the family coffers drained for the dowries of her two elder sisters, Suzanne Simonin (Pauline Etienne) is sent to a convent. She has no desire to be there, and makes that known to the kindly abbess who takes care of her. When her benefactress mysteriously dies, convent life rapidly becomes all the more complicated. Suzanne finds herself treading far murkier waters, her wellbeing completely at the mercy of the cold, unforgiving Supérieure Christine (Louise Bourgoin) and the overly attentive Supérieure Saint-Eutrope (Isabelle Huppert).

For much of its running time, The Nun explores Suzanne's plight with a steely depth and determination that's fascinating to watch. There's an icy tension to her confrontations with Supérieure Christine: these are rife with politics, power and drama, as the flock of nuns dutifully turn against Suzanne with the capricious menace of school-children on a playground. Etienne is wonderful throughout, playing Suzanne's rebellious spirit as convincingly as she does her moments of surrender and despair.

It's when the usually magnificent Huppert appears on the scene that The Nun stumbles badly. Huppert's character is drawn in broad, garish strokes, with none of the depth, complexity and subtlety of which she is so very capable. Almost laughably, Supérieure Saint-Eutrope appears to be little more than a fickle, amorous gargoyle leeching on the younger nuns in her charge.

Perhaps that's partly the point - it could be a tip of the hat to the fact that Diderot's novel started out as an elaborate practical joke on a friend, rather than a genuinely impassioned treatise on the state of the church. Even so, the shift in tone from considered to campy is abrupt and, ultimately, too much to bear.