女教徒

在18世纪的法国，一个女孩(苏珊娜·西蒙宁)被迫违背自己的意愿宣誓成为一名修女。三位母亲的上级(莫尼夫人，圣克里斯汀修女和谢尔夫人)对待她的方式完全不同，从母性关怀，虐待狂迫害，到女同性恋的欲望。苏珊娜的美德给每个人带来灾难，这是对启蒙哲学家丹尼斯·狄德罗对宗教滥用的猛烈抨击的忠实改编。

English Title: The Nun

Original Title: La religieuse

Year: 1966

Country: France

Language: French, Latin

Genre: Drama

Director: Jacques Rivette

Screenwriters: Jacques Rivette, Jean Gruault

based on the novel by Denis Diderot

Music: Jean-Claude Eloy

Cinematography: Alain Levent

Editing: Denise de Casabianca

Cast:

Anna Karina

Liselotte Pulver

Francine Bergé

Micheline Presle

Jean Martin

Francisco Rabal

Christian Lénier

Yori Bertin

Pierre Meyrand

Charles Millot

Marc Eyraud

Gilette Barbier

Wolfgang Reichmann

Michel Delahaye

Rating: 8.1/10

Catching Jacques Rivette’s THE NUN on the big screen pays great dividends, restored in its pristine luster, the film is among three films screened here in Shanghai to commemorate the diva of Nouvelle Vague, Anna Karina (1940-2018), another two are Godard’s VIVRE SA VIE (1962) and A WOMAN IS A WOMAN (1961).

Initially banned for its scathing anticlerical ridicule and opprobrium, THE NUN is an adaptation of Denis Diderot’s novel, and Rivette’s second full-length feature. During 135 minutes, it relates the story of Susanne Simonin (Karina), an 18-year-old girl of the mid-18 century, who is railroaded into nunhood by her bourgeois parents, because she is a bastard (a secret her mother tries to keep from her unwitting husband) and the family has no money left for her dowry, sending her to the Almighty’s calling seems to be the only option, although it is plain specious.

The crux is, for Susanne, devout as she is, she feels that she has never received the calling from God. Her eventual vow-taking ceremony is conspicuously omitted on the screen, and reckoning by the reactions of her mother (Lénier) and Mother Superior Mme de Moni (Presle, ever so graceful and compassionate), something is certainly amiss there. Later Susanne claims that she has no recollection of the ceremony, perhaps she was in a fugue, witnessed by many, that fact could have been graciously taken as a testimony of revoking her vows had the church assumed a more liberal attitude towards its devotees. So one can see that it is religious orthodoxy, not Catholic church itself is the fair game here.

Susanne possesses an innocuous, inexperienced soul, her idée fixe is that she cannot be cloistered in a convent because she is not qualified for that kind of devotion. She is not “enlightened”, neither secularly nor spiritually. When she is taken as the new favorite of the sapphic Mme de Chelles (Pulver), she is none the wiser to understand it is the carnal urge in the play (not until she is illuminated by the priest who listens to her confession, the “mansplaining” avant la lettre), nor could she survive in the secular world, as it is equally, if not more sinisterly, cloistered.

It is overt that the part after Susanne finally escapes from the convent is fast-tracked (encapsulated in less than 10 minutes), as if Rivette suddenly registers that time is running out. But previous to that, audience have undergone a Manichaean rollercoaster of a ride that segues from the high-handed oppression under a cold, stern, authoritative Sister Sainte Christine (Bergé), who succeeds Mme de Moni as the new abbess and cruelly persecutes Susanne for her recalcitrance, to the utter vivacity, chipper sorority stemmed from Mme de Chelles’s governance, like Susanne, we viewers also cannot believe our eyes, how mischievously cunning is Rivette to stage-manage such an about-face (including the modulation of its palettes) to taunt the church’s disparate improprieties!

Karina is at the top of her game here, grittily buckles down for Susanne’s ordeal and is most pathos-invoking in her heartfelt cri de coeur, bedraggled, miserable, baring her heart out and kneeling down to a ruthless superior. Bar Sister Sainte Christine, can any human being stay unaffected by such a soul-shattering emotional plea? That said, Karina’s brilliance is somehow dimmed when Pulver makes her appearance, her handsy Mme de Chelles is a delightful outlier of all the prior characters, an archetype of lesbian nun which would be vilified, mocked and exploited in lesser hands. Yet Pulver plays her with such a facility of earnestness that is in tandem with Mme de Chelles’ superficial frivolity and benevolence, and when her infatuation brings her downfall, our giggling slowly freezes and what gels is something less definitive, she is between the butt of a joke and a tragic figure tormented by her inner demons, Pulver is fantastic from A to Z. Concurrently, Karina’s Susanne takes a back seat as a perturbed virgin, like a scare-easy bird, her integrity is the sole lifeline she can hold on to, which foreshadows her denouement. Viewed today, Rivette’s exceedingly watchable cause célèbre is neither scandalous nor sacrilegious, if anything, it might aid to rectify the church’s abiding Procrustean canker.

referential entries: Rivette’s WOMEN DUELLING (1976, 7.3/10), CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (1974, 9.2/10); Luis Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA (1961, 8.2/10).