Dark Habits

After fleeing a nightclub, singer Yolanda finds refuge in a peculiar convent run by a community of nuns who have little in common with Christian humility.

One writes trashy romance novels, another keeps a tiger, yet another experiments with drugs, and the mother superior harbors feelings for the new resident that go beyond spiritual concern. Within the convent walls, religious discipline gives way to desires, obsessions, and fantasies.

One of the most iconoclastic comedies in Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography was made at a time when Spain was still freeing itself from the legacy of Francoist conservatism. With his characteristic subversiveness, the director uses church settings to tell a story of loneliness, the need for love, and the right to be oneself. By combining melodrama, camp humor, and pop culture aesthetics, the director creates a world that is as absurd as it is surprisingly tender toward its characters. This is Almodóvar at his wildest and most provocative, yet already fully recognizable.