Banned for two years in France for its supposedly excessive attack on the Church, Rivette's adaptation of Denis Diderot's famous novel of the 18th Century convent life became a cause celebré of another sort. The Nun is a work of neo-classic austerity and integrity. Anna Karina plays a beautiful young woman whose parents force her to enter a convent, which proves prisonlike, and on a deeper level of individual repression, an arena for sexual hysteria and slavery. As Molly Haskell has observed, Suzanne (Karina), unlike most women in literature, desires freedom for its own sake: “She seeks liberty rather than romance or security or rest or the other pragmatic goals which are considered to be the instinctive aspirations of women.” But freedom is impossible for Suzanne, who moves inexorably towards tragedy. Rivette's style, rigorous and simple, perfectly expresses this movement and the claustrophobic world from which no escape can be made.