Entre tinieblas (1983) - film review

When her boyfriend kills himself on an overdose of heroine, nightclub singer Yolanda takes refuge from the police in a crumbling convent.  Here she is welcomed by the sisters of the Order of Humble Redeemers, who have fallen on hard times.  The dormitories are empty, the nuns’ patron has decided to withdraw her financial support, and with no one to redeem the nuns have taken to some very bizarre activities.  The mother superior deals in heroine, one sister has adopted a stray tiger as a pet, another sister writes trashy women’s novels under a pseudonym, another continually punishes herself, and one sister devotes herself to making ornate costumes for the convent’s statues.  Yolanda could not have come at a better time, as she offers the nuns a chance not just to save her, but also to save themselves...

Although director Pedro Almodóvar has pretty well disowned this film, partly because he considers it a commission piece rather than something he would have chosen to make off his own bat, Entre tinieblas (a.k.a. Dark Habits) represents an important milestone in his career, marking his transition from an underground filmmaker with a small but loyal following in his own country to an internationally renowned director.  Made on a low budget, the film lacks the polish and sophistication of Almodóvar’s later films, but it has many of the features that we now associate with this director – his subversive blend of comedy and melodrama, his daring use of colour and unusual camera angles, the familiar anti-establishment subtext and, most evidently, his use of an ensemble female cast made up of some very talented actresses.

Dark Habits is a witty and provocative reflection of a society that apparently has lost its way, a society in which tawdry material distractions have superseded religion as the means by which most people find satisfaction and solace in their increasingly meaningless lives.  Deprived of people to redeem, the nuns depicted in the film find themselves compelled to live like those around them and they ultimately see nothing wrong with indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, including drug taking, partying and secretly lusting after members of the opposite sex.  

The film has been described as an attack on the Catholic Church but it would perhaps be fairer to say that it is a critique of our society in general.  What Dark Habits show us is the insidious effect of a collapse in moral values arising from the growth of materialism and a complete breakdown of the old traditions of family, community and religious instruction.  In such a world, seen here in the microcosm of a crumbling urban convent, the Church has become pretty well redundant, and its passing can only accelerate our descent into a moral and spiritual vacuum.  Almodóvar’s portrayal of nuns behaving badly may shock and offend some but there’s no doubt that the film offers a sobering reflection of where our society is heading, towards an abyss from which there is seemingly no return.

© James Travers 2009

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