Dark Habits [Entre Tinieblas] *** (1983, Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredes, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave) – Classic Movie Review 3573

This tasty 1983 black comedy from fashionable cult writer-director Pedro Almodóvar is his third film – after Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980) and Labyrinth of Passion (1982). It has an almost all-female cast featuring many of his favourite leading ladies and is set in a Madrid convent. There the nightclub singer Yolanda (Cristina Sánchez Pascual) is hiding out from the police after her lover has died of an overdose of the heroin she’s supplied him. And the eccentric nuns are none too well behaved.

It features another entrancing performance by Almodóvar’s favourite actress Carmen Maura as Sister Sin and there is delicious work too as other sisters from his other favourites, Marisa Paredes as Sister Manure, Julieta Serrano as Mother Superior and Chus Lampreave as Sister Sewer Rat.

Almodóvar’s satirical, extremely dark comedy is low on plot but high on comic vignettes and grand style, with harsh lighting, big music and surprising close-ups. And it is wickedly funny.

Also in the cast are Mari Carrillo as the Marchioness, Lina Canalejas as Sister Snake, Manuel Zarzo as the Chaplain, Will More, Laura Cepeda, Miguel Zûñiga, Marisa Tejeda, Eve Silva, Cecilia Roth (a very appearance as Mercedes, former redeemer and lover of the Mother Superior), Pedro Almodóvar and Augustin Almodóvar.

Almodóvar says: ‘I came up with the story of a girl who drives both men and women wild, a girl who sings, drinks, takes drugs, occasionally goes through periods of abstinence and has the extraordinary experiences one would never have were one to live a hundred years. I had in mind Marlene Dietrich’s work with Josef von Sternberg, especially Blonde Venus (1932), where she plays a housewife who becomes a singer, spy and prostitute, who travels the world living a life of never ending adventure.’

Multi millionaire Hervé Hachuel commissioned Almodóvar to make a film starring his then girlfriend Pascual, who turned out to have had limited acting skills. So Almodóvar rewrote the film to give prominence to the nuns.

It was rejected by the Cannes Film Festival on account of its treatment of religion, and instead had its premiere on 9 September 1983 at the Venice Film Festival, where some of the organisers considered it blasphemous and anti-Catholic so it was not shown in the official section. Dark Habits went on to be a modest success, cementing Almodóvar’s reputation as Spanish cinema’s enfant terrible.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3573

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