{"id":1320,"date":"2010-11-13T01:06:42","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T06:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2014-07-26T01:21:17","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T05:21:17","slug":"dvd-behind-convent-walls-interieur-dun-couvent-interno-di-un-convento-1978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=1320","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Behind Convent Walls \/ Int\u00e9rieur d’un couvent \/ Interno di un convento (1978)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label\/Studio: Cult Epics \/ Catalogue: DVD-085 \/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: June 27, 2010<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Abbess Flavia is having quite a time keeping her wayward nuns in line, pitting the ways of the Lord against immodest personal touching.<\/p>\n

Special Features: A”Working with Borowczyk: An exclusive interview with cinematographer Luciano Tovoli” (17:00) in English \/ Featurette: “Behind the Walls” (10:51) \/ Lobbycard Gallery (11)<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

As cinematographer Luciano Tovoli (Suspiria<\/strong>) recalls in the DVD\u2019s interview,\u00a0Behind Convent Walls<\/strong> was typical of the blended humour, erotica, and absurdity integral to Walerian Borowczyk\u2019s canon, but as his personal brand of witty, sexually frank films were being pushed off screens by horror-themed erotica, Borowczyk kind of had nowhere to go, and after a few more theatrical efforts such as the anthology\u00a0Immoral Women \/ Les H\u00e9ro\u00efnes du mal<\/strong> (1979), he disappeared from filmmaking, and seemed to fade into the ether as \u2018the guy who made\u00a0The Beast<\/strong>,\u2019 his best-known and most over-the-top work.<\/p>\n

Borowczyk had two big flaws that made his films both memorable and the unfortunate targets of moral tightwads: he had no problem indulging in rude, softcore imagery (which still makes access to uncut versions for retrospectives tough), and his films weren\u2019t necessarily built around all-erotic plots, making it hard to sell them as straight erotica where women just disrobed, boffed, and self-pleasured in central sequences, and kept men in dirty theatres content.<\/p>\n

Behind<\/strong> is essentially about bawdy nuns finding ways to sneak around the strict moral and behavioural code meted out by an Abbess, and the local Priest who finds the internecine conflicts within the nunnery amusing. There\u2019s a kind of apocalyptic force that breaks wind and the end, bringing all the naughtiness in\u00a0Behind<\/strong> to a closing fold, but that\u2019s not really important.<\/p>\n

What elevates\u00a0Behind<\/strong> among Borowczyk\u2019s substantive body of work is his ability to create humor through careful little narrative curves and gestures, many scattered around like components of a fragmented cartoon gag with the punchline eventually coming down the turnpike \u2013 perhaps the most obvious lingering elements from his years as a respected animator in Poland.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the delivery man who brings fresh meat to the nunnery, wearing horse-like blinders to save him from nunnery temptations and give the girls peace of mind that they\u2019re not being mentally dressed down by this buffed stranger from the crude outside world; naturally, when the blinders come off, erotic hell breaks loose.<\/p>\n

The delivery man later chops wood for the nuns’ itchen ovens, and as lengthy chunks mistakenly crash into a second floor hallway, they\u2019re scooped up by a nun and packed with others in a dresser drawer. Later, another nun \u2013 a skilled draftsman who also doodles naked men with submarine-sized phalluses \u2013 is requested to use her artistic pen to draw a custom image of Jesus, which is later stenciled onto the flat end of one of the wooden chunks that\u2019s been whittled and smoothened into a fat dildo, so each internal thrust brings the nun closer to God’s son.<\/p>\n

Another nun, Sister Veronica (Borowczyk’s muse, Marina Pierro), likes to keep her mind and body fit through yoga, and does her naked routine in front of a Jesus carving or portrait. In the film\u2019s opening set-piece, where a nun fiddles a gleeful song while her sisters mass pleasure themselves in the church, Veronica lies on the carpet in the Abbess\u2019 office, pelvis raised, and legs gyrating so every leg and fold of her underwear wrap is scrutinized by the big Jesus cross on the wall.<\/p>\n

Abbess Flavia Orsini snoops through the sisters\u2019 rooms, opening drawers, reading diaries, and poking straw mattresses with her handy cane\/sword combo-stick in search of contraband.<\/p>\n

The local priest is delighted when his nephew visits, but the boy is hardly a innocent sketch artist of religious iconography; instead, he hangs close to the cloister, and taunts the nunnery\u2019s most pious soul until she\u2019s driven mad by his advances, and the two consummate their union in the hallowed courtyard, adding to the destructive wind that brings the nunnery\u2019s moral walls crashing down.<\/p>\n

Borowczyk was an artist with a playful, provocative, dirty mind, and he was skilled in crafting brilliantly hysterical sequences with a heightened sense of the absurd. His fixations on minutia and integrating them into crazy scenes are sometimes more fascinating than watching the jiggling nun boobies, or whatever erotic silliness he packs into a scene.<\/p>\n

Whereas his later films contain some straight-faced dark elements \u2013 even\u00a0The Beast<\/strong> is awkward for its mix of the absurd, horror, and a hairy monster with a dripping, percolating phallus \u2013\u00a0Behind<\/strong>is decidedly light, and contains some of the nutty character types and rude shots at religion which made his first feature film,\u00a0Goto, Island of Love<\/strong> (1968) such a gem. Borowczyk never lessens the llevel of ridiculousness, and perhaps his simplest ploy is to have the nuns perpetually wearing their habits regardless of what they\u2019re doing with their nude little bodies.<\/p>\n

Cult Epics\u2019 print is taken from a decent NTSC-PAL master, but Tovoli\u2019s decision to use only natural light limits the detail and colours that could\u2019ve been rendered with studio lighting. The hand-held camera work is also sometimes distracting, since one expects staid, eloquent camera portraiture and movements due to the subject matter \u2013 naked nuns \u2013 and location. And yet the lighting and rough camera movements give the film a realist feel, which also exploits the superb location (a real monastery in Italy) and narrow passages through which the half-naked nuns must travel.<\/p>\n

Behind<\/strong> is also fully uncut \u2013 something Borowczyk connoisseur Marc Morris (www.mondoerotico.co.uk) and fans Sam Dunn and and Daniel Bird repeatedly point out in the DVD\u2019s making-of featurette, which also covers the problems Borowczyk faced as the narrow subgenre he created for himself, absurdist erotica, became obsolete. The trio also discuss his fixations, long association with actress Marina Pierro, actress Ligia Branice (La jet\u00e9e<\/strong>), and the making of\u00a0Behind<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Behind<\/strong> does fall into the nunsploitation category and is larded with touchy-feely, misbehaving nuns, it\u2019s still a Borowczyk Film, and illustrates the methods in which an eccentric artist transcended an otherwise limiting genre.<\/p>\n

This title is available separately or part of Cult Epics\u2019 The Nunsploitation Convent (limited to 2500 copies), which features\u00a0Behind Convent Walls<\/strong> and Norifumi Suzuki\u2019s outrageous anti-Catholic assault\u00a0School of the Holy Beast \/ Seij\u00fb gakuen<\/strong> (1974). Note: this set is apparently available from Amazon.com with a bonus disc, featuring the \u201cnewly produced\u201d documentary\u00a0The History of Nunsploitation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Other Borowczyk titles carried by Cult Epics include\u00a0G<\/a>oto, Island of Love \/ Goto, l’\u00eele d’amour <\/strong>(1968),\u00a0The Beast \/ La b\u00eate<\/strong> (1975),\u00a0Behind Convent Walls<\/strong> \/\u00a0Int\u00e9rieur d’un couvent<\/strong> \/\u00a0Interno di un convento<\/strong> (1978), and\u00a0Love Rites \/ Queen of the Night \/ C\u00e9r\u00e9monie d’amour<\/strong> (1987)<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2010 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE):<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0The Beast \/ La b\u00eate<\/a><\/strong> (1975) —\u00a0Goto, Island of Love \/ Goto, l’\u00eele d’amour<\/a> <\/strong>(1968) —\u00a0\u00a0Immoral Women \/ Les H\u00e9ro\u00efnes du mal<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>(1979)\u00a0— Love Rites \/ Queen of the Night \/ C\u00e9r\u00e9monie d’amour<\/strong><\/a> (1987) —\u00a0School of the Holy Beast \/ Seij\u00fb gakuen<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>(1974)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Very Good Label\/Studio: Cult Epics \/ Catalogue: DVD-085 \/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: June 27, 2010 Synopsis: Abbess Flavia is having quite a time keeping her wayward nuns in line, pitting the ways of the Lord against immodest personal touching. Special Features: A”Working with Borowczyk: An […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[124,16,17],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-li","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9317,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/9317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}