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| Julieta Serrano and Cristina Sánchez Pascual in Dark Habits |
Cast: Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Marisa Paredes, Carmen Maura, Lina Canalejas, Mary Carillo, Berta Riaza, Manuel Zarzo, Cecilia Roth. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar. Cinematography: Ángel Luis Fernández. Film editing: José Salcedo.
What is it that makes nuns funny? Is it just their anachronistic appearance, their ostensible modesty and piety in a culture that is anything but modest and pious? The nuns in Pedro Almodóvar's Dark Habits are certainly modest in dress, though one of them creates outré fashion designs (with the help of the parish priest). And they're pious enough to adopt self-mortifying names like Sister Sewer Rat (Chus Lampreave), Sister Manure (Marisa Paredes), Sister Damned (Carmen Maura), and Sister Snake (Lina Canalejas). But they also shoot heroin, drop LSD, and write salacious popular fiction. They run a retreat for wayward women like Yolanda (Cristina Sánchez Pascual), who brought about the death of a friend when she sold him some poisoned heroin and is on the run from the police. It's to Almodóvar's credit that he keeps the film going once the shock humor of these characters' secret lives is delivered, although there's not much more to Dark Habits than a comic take on transgressive behavior. At best, the movie is a sketch for the later, more involving Almodóvar films to come.
