Even by arthouse standards, the French director Eugène Green's minimal, formalistic films are an acquired taste, and his latest work, which centres on a beautiful French actress in Lisbon to shoot a film version of the 18th-century novel about the affair between a nun and a French naval officer, is fairly characteristic. There are only two outright jokes, one being Green himself as the film's director, Denis Verde (ho! ho!), the other a hotel desk clerk mocking pretentious French films.
Otherwise, it's a solemn, portentous affair, dramatically, verbally and visually, where everyone talks in an uninflected manner. This does have its payoff in an oddly moving, all-night encounter in a chapel between the actress playing a nun and an authentic Portuguese religieuse, in which they discuss the nature of secular and spiritual love.
Watching the movie two days after the death of Peter Yates, the versatile British director best known for Bullitt, Breaking Away and The Dresser, I was reminded of one of his most enterprising works, the 1964 screen version of NF Simpson's absurdist play One Way Pendulum. In his only big-screen role, Jonathan Miller played a young man who (for reasons too complicated to go into here) is obsessed with teaching a group of speak-your-weight machines to sing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' from Handel's Messiah. Had he persisted a little longer, his choir might have auditioned successfully to play the lead roles in The Portuguese Nun.
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