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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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4
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6 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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If
you've ever read historian Barbara Tuchman's A
Distant Mirror then you know just how awful
life was in Europe during the Middle Ages. (Recommended
reading for anyone who foolishly believes that
our modern era is the most most corrupt, decadent
and evil.) Its catalogue of genocide, war crimes,
brutality, religious fanaticism and social injustice
is a real eye-opener. People were treated like
animals and there was no such thing as "rights"
—
except, that is, the right of feudal lords to
do whatever they wanted to the vast majority of
the populace stationed beneath them. Females,
of course, were assigned the lowest position in
society, good for nothing but procreation, child-rearing
and cooking. The two dominant religions in Europe,
Catholicism and Islam, each treated women like
chattel and were used by the ruling classes as
means of subjugation. Ironically, in Christian
lands the convent system provided a way for influential
men to effectively imprison uppity or 'inconvenient'
females of the middle and upper classes while
at the same time establishing the one institution
in society where women actually had some measure
of control over themselves.
This dichotomy proved a fertile
breeding ground for a series of prurient exploitation
films during the 1970s, the so-called "Nunsploitation"
movie. The main themes of the genre were
religious hypocrisy, forbidden sex, lesbianism,
violence and (especially) torture. Gianfranco
Mingozzi's Flavia the Heretic,
loosely based on real events, relies less on such
elements than its more sensationalistic contemporaries.
Aspiring to be 'art house' rather than 'grind
house' fare, Flavia
owes more to Alejandro Jodorowsky than Jess Franco.
The film certainly contains its share of nudity,
torture and gore but I'd bet die-hard Nunsploitation
fans will probably be bored stiff.
In southern Italy circa 1400,
young Flavia Gaetani is placed in a convent by
her brutal father, a minor nobleman of the region.
Stifled by the rigors and drudgery of her daily
rituals, the young woman harbors forbidden thoughts:
Why must God be male? Why must men make
the rules and oppress women? She's shocked
and embittered when a fellow nun temporarily falls
under the sway of the hedonistic Tarantula Cult
and —
as
punishment for baring her breasts in the chapel
—
is
horribly tortured to death by Flavia's father
and the local bishop. (Boiling oil is poured on
the poor girl's naked body and her nipples are
sliced off.) Flavia also witnesses a French knight
rape a peasant girl in the middle of a pig sty.
Disgusted, she runs away accompanied by her only
male friend, Abraham (Claudio Cassinelli), a Jewish
servant who administers the dowry her noble father
will never have to pay out since locking her away
in the convent. The pair are quickly captured,
however, and after Flavia is flogged and Abraham
imprisoned she's returned to the cloister. Here
she comes under the influence of Sister Agatha
(María Casares), a crazed middle-aged nun who
hates all men and dreams of someday seizing the
papal throne in Rome. Sister Agatha fills her
head with fanciful proto-feminist notions of revenge
against their male oppressors and eventual "liberation."
The opportunity for that revenge comes sooner
than expected. A raiding party of Muslim warriors
lands on the coast, raping, pillaging and slaughtering.
Flavia joins with the Muslims, becoming the lover
of their handsome chieftain, Ahmed (Anthony Corlan,
Vampire
Circus). With her guidance, Ahmed leads his
soldiers in an assault on the convent and later
her father's castle. In her zeal for vengeance
Flavia herself dons armor and takes up the sword
to fight alongside them. Only later does she come
to realize that Islam isn't exactly a liberated
sister's best friend, and that the sweet wine
of revenge can have a most bitter aftertaste.
Beautifully lensed and handsomely
mounted on a low budget, Flavia
the Heretic is often evocative of Italy's
spaghetti westerns in its cinematography. The
bleak, dun-colored landscapes and centuries-old
buildings are used to great effect. As Flavia,
Florinda Bolkan (Don't
Torture a Duckling) smolders in her defiance
and is quite good. Oscar-winning composer Nicola
Piovani's haunting, elegiac score is another highlight.
The artful compositions of director Mingozzi imbue
the film with a tasteful sensibility even when
the onscreen action veers into exploitation territory
—
which, for the typical Nunsploitation fan, won't
be frequently enough. In a word, most of the flick
is quite boring. Aside from the torture of Sister
Livia (which is very brief, though the wince-inducing
nipple slicing is done in extreme close-up), the
scenes of naughty naked nuns and bloodletting
don't come until two-thirds the way through, when
the Muslims take over the convent. Here things
get really bizarre, as the nuns are forced to
drink a hallucinogenic potion which releases their
inhibitions. They strip and start getting it on
with the warriors, licking frescos on the walls,
etc. One of the women is shown writhing naked
inside the hollowed-out carcass of a cow, hanging
suspended from the rafters. (Yuck!)
Stuff like this isn't truly
my cup of tea but I'll readily admit it holds
one's attention. Still, the majority of Flavia
is very slow-paced and tedious, with long scenes
of the actors staring meaningfully at one another.
It strives to be a character study rather than
an exploitation flick and ends up succeeding as
neither.
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| This
obscure Euro-Cult title is brought to Region 1 DVD
by Synapse Films. Completely uncut, the film is
presented letterboxed at 1.78:1 (though the opening
and end credits are windowboxed for some reason)
with a solid, distortion-free mono audio track in
English. We don't get the trailer —
I'd love to see how this film was marketed —
but an image gallery of stills and lobby cards is
included, along with a brief video interview of
Florinda Bolkan shot fairly recently. Speaking in
English, Bolkan shows herself to be a thoughtful
and intelligent person; her stated reasons for doing
the film are quite interesting. Nathaniel Thompson
of Mondo-Digital.com
provides cogent liner notes.
7/24/03 |
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