La Religieuse, 1966
[Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse de Denis Diderot/The Nun]
Behind
the cloistered walls of a Paris convent in 1757, a young woman
named Suzanne (Anna Karina), the sole remaining unmarried daughter
of a prominent attorney named Simonin (Charles Millot) and his
wife (Christiane Lénier), is reluctantly brought before
the priest in order to take her monastic vows before creating a
scandal by willfully (and unexpectedly) refusing to take them and
instead, pleading hysterically to her inexpressive parents to be
set free before being forcibly silenced by attending nuns who abruptly
conclude the ceremony by drawing the curtains before a group of
stunned, invited guests in the adjoining vestibule. Spared from
the seeming indignity of having to learn a practical vocation in
order to maintain the bourgeois family's appearance of privilege,
but having reached adulthood without a suitable dowry for marriage,
Suzanne has little recourse but to comply with the selfish, unrelenting
demands of her callous parents, a coercion that is further ingrained
into the tormented young woman's psyche when her mother reveals
the incidental details of her nebulous paternity. Sublimating her
own desire for freedom, Suzanne comes under the protection of the
gentle and nurturing abbess of Longchamp, Mme de Moni (Micheline
Presle) who advises her to accept God's will, and becomes resigned
to her fate. However, when the abbess passes away, Suzanne immediately
finds herself in the disfavor of Mme de Moni's successor, the stern
and uncompromising Mother of Novices, Soeur Sainte-Christine (Francine
Bergé), as she institutes an intolerant and oppressive policy
of asceticism, self-abnegation, and rigorous discipline. Foundering
in her resolve without the moral support of her trusted confidant,
Suzanne becomes increasingly desperate and maniacal in her quest
to recant her insincere vows, regain her freedom, and escape to
the outside world.
Based on the Jean Gruault play, an adaptation of the 1760 novel by
Age of Enlightenment philosopher, enyclopedist, and novelist Denis Diderot (posthumously published in 1796),
La Religieuse is a spare, elegantly taut, and indelibly haunting exposition
on the rigidity of class, institutional repression, and the consequences
of a patriarchal society. Jacques Rivette illustrates his familiar preoccupation
with the interrelation between theatrical performance and real life (note
the conventional use of stage tapping to indicate the commencement of the
drama), not only thematically, through the incorporation of historical fiction
that, nevertheless, retains a cultural periodicity in its realism and social
relevance, but also visually, in the somber, insular staging of the convent
rooms, iron-barred vestibules, corridors, and even outside (walled) grounds
that conveys a pervasive sense of claustrophobia, entrapment, and forced
intimacy. Evoking the austerity and unrelenting demoralization of the titular
heroine in Kenji Mizoguchi's seminal film Life
of Oharu, Suzanne's plight is similarly a tragic consequence of an
entrenched, repressive class structure that subjugates individuality,
personal conscience, and human will for the illusion of privilege, order,
and conformity: a codification of social behavior that arbitrarily
relegates cloistered, religious service as an alternative vocation rather
than as a conscientious (and deeply personal) spiritual calling. In essence,
it is society's intractable adherence to doctrine, regimentation, and
procedure over humanity and conscience that is symptomatically echoed in
the cruelty, barbarism, pettiness, and self-indulgent excess within the
walls of the cloisters: a pervasive moral bankruptcy that infects even
the most hermetic - and powerful - of institutions. It is through this
oppressive and inescapable reality that the recurring image of a humbled,
prostrate Suzanne becomes, not an expiational gesture by a broken-willed
communicant, but a graceful, figurative act of flight, bearing of burden,
and irrevocable transcendence.
© Acquarello 2004. All rights reserved.
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On
a lazy summer afternoon at a courtyard café of a provincial
hotel, a lone, pensive artist named Nicolas (David Bursztein) abstractly
observes a pair of English tourists and rough sketches them onto
his journal before being distracted by the mechanical whirring
of an actuated instant camera from an overlooking balcony. The
surreptitious photographer is revealed to be Marianne (Emmanuelle
Béart) who ostensibly complies with Nicolas' request to
discuss in person the terms for which she would be willing to
relinquish the presumably incriminating photograph - a playful
verbal sparring that, not surprisingly, takes on an immediate
sexual overtone as the two hurriedly make their way to an upstairs
room on the pretense of finalizing their dubious transaction.
The mysterious - and overtly unseemly - public display is soon
revealed to be a role-playing game staged by the young couple,
perhaps out of boredom and restlessness in the bucolic village,
as Nicolas awaits the opportunity to meet with a renowned, semi-retired
artist named Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) through their
mutual acquaintance, an art collector and gallery owner named
Porbus (Gilles Arbona) before the couple's trip comes to an end.
Ten years earlier, the reclusive Frenhofer decided to abandon
an ambitious study entitled