12 February 2024 Monday
Movie Recommendation: La Religieuse (The Nun)
La Religieuse, directed by master director Jacques Rivette, Truffaut mentioned him as "The New Wave began thanks to Rivette.", is a 1966 drama that Rivette adapted from Diderot's novel of the same name. The film, starring Anna Karina, tells the story of the religious and social pressures faced by a young woman (Suzanne) who is forced to become a nun against her will. La Religieuse appears as an important film that shows us the helplessness of women in the social order of that period and their position against the impositions of not only religion but also social life.
The film criticizes religion and the church through the character of Suzanne. However, what stands out much more than this criticism in the film is the traumas that monastery life creates in all the characters there. The film points to the monastery as a place where people are forced to suppress all his/her natural impulses and perhaps that is exactly why he/she is forced to live a hypocritical life.
While the story adapted from Diderot's novel is told at length in the movie La Religieuse, it seems that the final part is passed quite quickly. The resolution in the scenario develops quite rapidly. Apart from that, there is not much structural problem in the scenario. Whether it is based on a novel or not, it can be said that it has a very impressive scenario with its multi-layered main character whose psychology we can clearly understand. Some of the characters other than the main character appear as depthless characters that we can call typecasting rather than characters. Because these are simple characters and are drawn as purely evil and/or hypocritical characters.
Suzanne is helpless from the beginning to the end of the movie because there is a social order in the movie where women do not have the right to choose. The film is very similar to Asiye Nasıl Kurtulur?, directed by Atıf Yılmaz and written by Vasıf Öngören. It reminds me of the movie. Although their stories are not very similar, they are similar in terms of the story of a woman trying to save herself from the conditions in which she finds herself alone. The fact that, until recently, women had no choice other than getting married or falling into a bad path, is one of the themes frequently discussed in Yeşilçam films. Asiye somehow saves herself in the movie, but in the movie La Religieuse, Suzanne thinks that the only solution for herself is suicide and throws herself out of the window in the final scene. The Bovarism felt throughout the film is fully revealed with the character's suicide.
