Alternate title(s):
Foreign Title: The Nun
Date: January 01, 1965 to December 31, 1965
Dates Note: 1965
Country of Origin:
France
Place of Origin: France
Languages:
French
Color: Color
Silent: No
Based On: the novel by Denis Diderot
Additional Info:
Banned for two years in France for its supposedly excessive attack on the Church, Rivette’s adaptation of Denis Diderot’s famous novel of eighteenth-century convent life became a cause célèbre. Anna Karina plays a young woman, Suzanne, whose parents force her to enter a convent. The institution proves prisonlike and on a deeper level of individual repression, is revealed as an arena for sexual hysteria and slavery. In her drive for freedom from authoritarian abuse in its myriad forms, Suzanne moves inexorably towards tragedy. Rivette’s style, rigorous and simple, perfectly expresses this movement and the claustrophobic world from which there is no escape.
Promotional support for La religieuse from Alliance Française—San Francisco