Rivette's adaptation of Denis Diderot's novel of eighteenth-century convent life was banned for two years in France for its supposedly excessive attack on the Church, becoming a succès de scandale. However, Rivette's subject here is not religion, per se, but the arbitrary exercise of power-and women's particular vulnerability to it. Anna Karina portrays a beautiful young woman, Suzanne, whose parents force her to enter a convent since they have no money for a dowry. She desperately tries to escape as she is shunted from convent to convent. Each is remarkably different from the last-one, a true prison, another, an arena for sexual hysteria; what remains constant is Karina/Suzanne herself, pure in her drive for freedom, and moving inexorably towards tragedy. The Nun is a work of neoclassic integrity, its images washed in painterly blues and pastels, its emotional impact all the more powerful for its austerity.