 |
| Marina Pierro in Behind Convent Walls |
Cast: Ligia Branice, Howard Ross, Marina Pierro, Gabriela Giacobbe, Rodolfo Dal Pra, Loredana Martinez, Mario Maranzana, Alex Partexano. Screenplay: Walerian Borowczyk, based on a book by Stendhal. Cinematography: Luciano Tovoli. Film editing: Walerian Borowczyk. Music: Sergio Montori.
Nuns just wanna have fun, or so Walerian Borwczyk's Behind Convent Walls tells us. What forbids them from doing so is a stern Mother Superior, so when her back is turned they're up to all manner of rebellious behavior, the most lurid of which is perhaps the employment of a hand-carved dildo with an image of Jesus on one end. Ostensibly based on an essay in Stendhal's Promenades de Rome, Borowczyk's film is thought by some to rise above its soft-core prurience by virtue of some creative cinematography and its criticism of clerical celibacy and hypocrisy, but it seems to me not much more than a male fantasy about the lives of inaccessible women.