La Religieuse (The Nun) (修辱)

My third film at the French Cinepanorama is La Religieuse (The Nun) based on an 18th century novel written by the French Encyclopedist Denis Diderot in about 1780 but not published until after his death in 1796. It's co-adapted for the screen by Jérôme Beaujour and the director Guillaume Nicloux.

It's a film about the fate of a nun called Susanne Simonon ( Pauline Etienne) whose letters of petition to his real father formed the backbone of the story. She was the youngest daughter of the Simonon family and was about to be sent to a convent when she turned 16  but she resisted with all the force of her will. She was told by her parents that they had little choice because the marriages of her two sisters Armelle and Lucie had exhausted her lawyer father's estate. To persuade her to drop her resistance, her mother (Martina Gedeck ) who loves her but could not resist the insistence of her strong willed ostensible lawyer father, tells Susanne the darkest secret of her own life: Susanne was the fruit of "sin", ie.  one night of love between her and her real father, the Marquis de Croismare and asks that Susanne goes to the convent as her own act of contrition of her sin to God. Susanne, a sweet, naive and innocent girl who has got some real musical talent who really believes in God and especially in the need for complete honesty before God, reluctantly agrees. That is the start of a series of revelations of what really went on in two French convents.



In the first, the convent at Longchamps she had an understanding mother superior Madame de Moni (Françoise Lebrun), but when it came time for her to take her vow of obedience, to the surprise of all present, including her parents, she refused because she honestly did not feel the call but her mother superior gave her some time for further reflections but once she died, it being rumored that she was pushed into the well of the convent by a nun who was mad because she was sent there against her will when the truth might be that she committed suicide because she felt she failed God or that God had ceased to give her the gift of persuasion over her favorite novice, Susanne.

A new mother superior arrived, Sister Christine(Louise Bourgoin) who advocated strict rules including wearing some very uncomfortable bodices. Susanne, who cherished her freedom and reason, refused and threw it into a fire and urged other novices and nuns to do the same. When Susanne praised Madame de Moni as an angel before Sister Christine, the latter became jealous and wanted the same kind of devotion from Susanne, not however through love and understanding but through the use of her powers as the mother superior of the convent. She had Susanne punished for her disobedience of her orders by depriving her of food, clean clothes and when it was time for her to make her vow, Susanne fainted but when she woke up, she was told that she had already taken it. When it was found that Susanne had stolen some ink and paper from the office with which she wrote down all she had endured and asked his real father to help her and which she hid under the floor board, her room was searched, her hair cut and she was forbidden to take the holy communion, to make confession nor to even to pray. With the help of one of the sisters, she tried to obtain outside help, offered by a lawyer friend of her friend's parents. They petitioned the Vatican for permission to retract her vows. The local bishop went to the convent and tried to find out what it was all about and when he found out, he immediately relieved sister Christine of her position as head of the convent. The papal petition took months but was rejected. However, Susanne was permitted to transfer convent. None offered to take her except one. She went there and was apparently very well treated by the mother superior there, Saint-Eutrope ( Isabelle Huppert) but it turned out that she was a lesbian. When she made a confession of her advances to the father confessor Father Morante, who himself also became a priest against his true wishes but was too cowardly to resist as Susanne did, he gave orders that she was not to be allowed to go near the mother superior, something which caused Saint Eutrope to go out of her mind. Later, as an act of sympathetic support, he gave Susanne the key to the exit of the convent and arranged for her escape to meet her real father. It was fortunate that she was able to see her ailing father just before he died. When the film ends, we see Susanne finally in her real father's estate, looking upon its huge garden, bathed in the light of the morning sun.

The novel is a classic and the film a faithful rendition of the novel. It gave us a glimpse of all the evils perpetrated in the name of God. I think if God truly existed, it would be most unlikely that he would have gladly condoned all the evils of jealousy or the inhumani and even sadistic practices executed in his name by religious leaders. The film make us pause for thought. Have all those practices with which religious women acting in their capacities of head of the relevant religious institutions ceased or are many of such practices still being openly or subtly abused even nowadays, all in the name of God? Is religion necessarily a force for spiritual development or repression of the human spirit?

PS: the link for its tralier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u24Fs9JtbFo