D'Amato's stab at Nunsploitation feels like one of his lesser works, and in its own sub-genre it doesn't have the impact of Russell's The Devils, The Borowczyk's Behind Convent Walls or Franco's Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Like Franco's film, D'Amato's is based on a literary classic, in this case Diderot's La Religieuse. It follows Diderot's theme of a woman who refuses to accept her cloistering as a positive good, and D'Amato like Diderot appears to believe "the cloistered life (
) both unreasonable and unnatural" and that "the cloister and the insane asylum were strikingly similar".
As befits its title, D'Amato's film is mostly concerned to track down the linkages of the nun's behaviour to the images which surround them at the convent – the effigies of Christ and the Cross but also a statue of an "unknown god" which stands in the grounds, who is a dead-ringer for the devil. The Christ images spur the Nuns on in their devotions but when things slip to rather more fleshy concerns, the statue takes precedence. The unanswered question of the film is whether the Nun's various behaviour is driven from within, their own desires and drives towards sanctimony or sensuousness, or whether they are merely the pawns moved in a power play between inanimate images. The majority shots suggest a degree of motivation on the part of the sisters, as we stay close to their faces and see them reacting to events and phenomena from a subjective compulsion (as when one sister catches another sinning, whips her, sees the welts and then kisses the welts – she is clearly being driven by her own conflicting inner desires to these acts). Yet on a few occasions (privileged by their striking difference in an otherwise visually conservative film), involving both Christ and Devil figures, we get a bird's eye shot of characters performing their religious or saucy antics, and therefore the suggestion remains that the images are the governing principles at work.
After over an hour of various solo, lesbian and heterosexual softcore frolics (as usual in Nunsploitation, a virile man is sequestered in the convent) – all of which is slickly and dreamily shot but somewhat lacking in dramatic impact, we get a final act which goes rather barmy. The devil statue has been appearing where it shouldn't, over the altar and in the corridors, and so a nun is sent out of the convent for an exorcist. In a wood, she is attacked and raped by two rogues, a sequence which shocks by its sudden excursion into hardcore territory. It is as if the images we have seen in the convent, of the nuns, their devotions and their frolics, are being challenged by a sudden injection of horrid and grimy realism – D'Amato emphasising that the cloistered life is cut off from the real world (which the Mother Superior says is the case in her first speech in the film). This suggests an antagonism between the arty, soft-core demands of the genre and D'Amato's penchant for moments of graphic violence and sexual congress.
There follows a long exorcism sequence, in which the rather authoritarian priest wanders the cloister casting out the devil, a glazed look of determination on his face, as the writhing, sexualised nuns group around him. In the midst of this, the rebel nun and the sequestered man are coupling, a sexual act which culminated in her totally non-rationally motivated stabbing of him. It is as if the exorcism re-established the rule of the Christ effigy above and beyond the individual motivations of the Nun, and so she had to destroy the man who had previously been identified at times with the devil statue. This ending is the film's ultimate challenge to subjectivity – we can search in vain for some rationale as to why she stabs him but the film seems to be suggestion that she has been indeed a player in a contest between two sets of imagery, one Christian and the other Satanic. Whether D'Amato means to suggest a supernatural battle or merely a battle of images which people have themselves created isn't clear, although the film's title would suggest the latter. In which case, the film is an exposure of the sheer madness that is idolatry.
As befits its title, D'Amato's film is mostly concerned to track down the linkages of the nun's behaviour to the images which surround them at the convent – the effigies of Christ and the Cross but also a statue of an "unknown god" which stands in the grounds, who is a dead-ringer for the devil. The Christ images spur the Nuns on in their devotions but when things slip to rather more fleshy concerns, the statue takes precedence. The unanswered question of the film is whether the Nun's various behaviour is driven from within, their own desires and drives towards sanctimony or sensuousness, or whether they are merely the pawns moved in a power play between inanimate images. The majority shots suggest a degree of motivation on the part of the sisters, as we stay close to their faces and see them reacting to events and phenomena from a subjective compulsion (as when one sister catches another sinning, whips her, sees the welts and then kisses the welts – she is clearly being driven by her own conflicting inner desires to these acts). Yet on a few occasions (privileged by their striking difference in an otherwise visually conservative film), involving both Christ and Devil figures, we get a bird's eye shot of characters performing their religious or saucy antics, and therefore the suggestion remains that the images are the governing principles at work.
After over an hour of various solo, lesbian and heterosexual softcore frolics (as usual in Nunsploitation, a virile man is sequestered in the convent) – all of which is slickly and dreamily shot but somewhat lacking in dramatic impact, we get a final act which goes rather barmy. The devil statue has been appearing where it shouldn't, over the altar and in the corridors, and so a nun is sent out of the convent for an exorcist. In a wood, she is attacked and raped by two rogues, a sequence which shocks by its sudden excursion into hardcore territory. It is as if the images we have seen in the convent, of the nuns, their devotions and their frolics, are being challenged by a sudden injection of horrid and grimy realism – D'Amato emphasising that the cloistered life is cut off from the real world (which the Mother Superior says is the case in her first speech in the film). This suggests an antagonism between the arty, soft-core demands of the genre and D'Amato's penchant for moments of graphic violence and sexual congress.
There follows a long exorcism sequence, in which the rather authoritarian priest wanders the cloister casting out the devil, a glazed look of determination on his face, as the writhing, sexualised nuns group around him. In the midst of this, the rebel nun and the sequestered man are coupling, a sexual act which culminated in her totally non-rationally motivated stabbing of him. It is as if the exorcism re-established the rule of the Christ effigy above and beyond the individual motivations of the Nun, and so she had to destroy the man who had previously been identified at times with the devil statue. This ending is the film's ultimate challenge to subjectivity – we can search in vain for some rationale as to why she stabs him but the film seems to be suggestion that she has been indeed a player in a contest between two sets of imagery, one Christian and the other Satanic. Whether D'Amato means to suggest a supernatural battle or merely a battle of images which people have themselves created isn't clear, although the film's title would suggest the latter. In which case, the film is an exposure of the sheer madness that is idolatry.