Dark Habits
Dir: Pedro Almodóvar
1983
*****
For me, Dark Habits is Pedro Almodóvar's first great film and still stands as one of his best today. It's wickedly funny from the outset and just gets funnier and funnier, I think even the staunchest of Catholics would find it hard not to smirk to at least one joke. Almodóvar is Spanish though, and being brought up in Calzada de Calatrava his upbringing was about as Catholic as it gets, so he very knowingly parades the lives of Nuns but he also does so with just enough affection so as not to be too offensive. The film is never nasty in any way, nor do I think it is anti-catholic, anti-religious or blasphemous. Dark Habits is also noted as being his first commercially produced film. He has distanced himself from the film lately stating that he felt it isn't the film it should have been due to certain commercial obligations. So if he was restrained, or even edited, it makes you wonder what the original was like when producers in a deeply Catholic country allow Nuns to be shown indulging in drug taking and masochism. Viva Espania!