Novitiate (2017)

NOVITIATE  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Margaret Betts
    Margaret Qualley, Melissa Leo, Julianne Nicholson,
    Dianna Agron, Liana Liberato, Eline Powell,
    Maddie Hasson, Denis O'Hare, Rebecca Dayan
Change never comes easy in the Catholic Church, and the new rules brought about by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s were especially difficult for the traditionalists who wanted everything to stay medieval. This movie follows a group of novice nuns through their first two years in the convent, just as the new guidelines are going into effect. Resisting the changes tooth and nail is the Reverend Mother (Melissa Leo), who believes the Church and its inflexible rules are perfect just the way they are. She demands perfection of the young sisters, too, and her methods for achieving that can best be described as psychological torture. Whether the movie gets everything right is something I wouldn't know. I always figured the expression "bride of Christ" was metaphorical, but the approach to it here is literal. The girls wear wedding gowns when they take their sacred vows, and afterward go outside to dance around a fire, an ecstatic rite that looks distinctly pagan. But if that scene and others were enhanced for dramatic effect, a lot of what happens in "Novitiate" seems pretty accurate, and Leo's tyrannical Reverend Mother is just the kind of old-school nun who would've scared the crap out of us back at St. Bernard's.