Behind Convent Walls

uh, ye goths, what was happening here? As far as I can tell, this "movie" is the biggest crime against film editing ever committed. I'm down for bad or silly, but this is a lot like someone just set up a circus of people doing the dumbest things they could think of in nun habits and handed a camera to a monkey who ran around filming and stopping at random. We made it in 30 minutes. It may have been fun to hang out on this set (in a campy, kinda dumb sexy way) but it is sadly not fun to watch the results. I can't believe this made it onto Kanopy!

This is one of those movies that is so bad its good type of deals. Totally missed this growing up but is all over the sexploitation era of film or as the like to call it nun-exploitation. Basically you have a convent full of highly sexual nuns who finding various ways to get themselves off which include banging the butcher/handy man. My personal favorite, a nun who creates a phallus out of a piece of wood, has another nun draw a picture of jesus on the end of it to which the nun then proceeds to ram it up her you know where (yes, it shows it) while taking a hand mirror and trying to see the face of jesus while getting off. One of the best things ever. lol 8/10

In "Behind Convent Walls," the Abbess(Gabriella Giacobbe) does her best at keeping order at a convent in 19th century Italy but can only do so much, like blindfolding Silva(Alessandro Partexano) when he comes in to make repairs and deliveries. In fact, she goes so far as to get rid of a violin belonging to one of the nuns, causing more than a good deal of resentment amongst her charges. At least, she does not have to worry about her niece Clara(Ligia Branice). Even as it is kind of hard to differentiate between the characters at times and the plot such as it is pretty much imploding at the end, "Behind Convent Walls" is not bad for a prime example of nunsploitation(that's the term Film Comment digital editor Violet Lucca used in introducing the movie). The movie actually seeks to explore the retired practice of the daughters of nobility being sent to convents against their will. At the same time, the filmmakers literally bend themselves over backwards to get naked yoga into the story.

Wobbly camera, boring.

If the idea of lots of cute Italian and French 20-something year old women running around mostly naked in bits of nun outfits, having sex with one another and doing things that look like naked yoga appeals to you, then this is your nunsploitation flick. Even the acting isn't too bad, and the direction is pretty good. Of course, the action frequently drifts off into surrealist implausibility with occasional detours into complete nonsense, but, hey, look... naked young nuns! If you know and love the nunsploitation genre, this is one of the better offerings. If not, then why have you even read this far, ya perv? If nuns were really like this, there would be a lot more Catholics.