Entre tinieblas

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Entre Tinieblas
Original Spanish poster
Directed by	Pedro Almodóvar
Written by	Pedro Almodóvar
Starring	Cristina Sánchez Pascual Julieta Serrano Marisa Paredes Carmen Maura Chus Lampreave
Release date(s)	1983 (Spain) May 6, 1988 (USA)
Running time	114 Min
Language	Spanish
IMDb profile

Entre tinieblas (English: Dark Habits) is a black comedy from director Pedro Almodóvar. It is set in a convent where nuns are sadomasochistic lesbians that push and take drugs, write erotic novels, raise a tiger in the back garden, and idolize the greatest sinners of history.

1 Plot
2 Analysis
3 Other Versions
4 Trivia

[edit] Plot

When her lover dies of overdose, the nightclub singer Yolanda takes a chance to escape and retires in the convent that a strange couple of nuns recommended her to visit. There she finds shelter and gentle caring, while she gets to know a world made of contradictions, unusual habits and lies, totally different from the image she had of religious communities. Also, the abbess Julia falls in love with her, as she had done with each girl who lived there in the past.

As the nuns' life comes to a crucial point, where everyone decides what to do of their own passions, the love story between Julia and Yolanda remains impossible, and everything leads to a powerful, harshly ironic and at the same time deeply sad conclusion.

[edit] Analysis

Apart from the rough desecration of Catholic morals, Entre tinieblas also showcases the contradictions of church in a deeper and less flamboyant way, through the theme of love and its power of reducing everything to the basics.

In one scene a nun offers Yolanda a dose of heroin in the name of the Bible, where one is often instructed to feed the hungry. This is an example of Almodóvar's shocking humour.

[edit] Other Versions

The early Italian version was heavily cut, while a recent DVD from RaroVideo includes the deleted scenes.

[edit] Trivia

The nuns have names depicting their perversion or habit (Sor Rata De Callejón, Sor Sórdida, etc.).

On the wall of Julia's room there are images of great sinners, mostly divas of Hollywood.

Characters secretly writing novels (erotic and non) are frequent in the director's movies. The main character of La flor de mi secreto writes prose with a pseudonym and also works as a critic for a newspaper, heavily accusing herself of being a cheap writer. A characther from ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? is a writer who begins to develop interest in sadomasochism and wants to write a book about it.

The movie is frequently compared to Buñuel's Viridiana.

Pedro Almodóvar
Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980) • Laberinto de pasiones (1982) • Entre tinieblas (1983) • ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer ésto? (1984) • Matador (1986) • La ley del deseo (1987) • Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988) • ¡Átame! (1990) • Tacones lejanos (1991) • Kika (1993) • La flor de mi secreto (1995) • Carne trémula (1997) • Todo sobre mi madre (1999) • Hable con ella (2002) • La mala educación (2004) • Volver (2006)

Pedro Almodóvar

Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980) • Laberinto de pasiones (1982) • Entre tinieblas (1983) • ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer ésto? (1984) • Matador (1986) • La ley del deseo (1987) • Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988) • ¡Átame! (1990) • Tacones lejanos (1991) • Kika (1993) • La flor de mi secreto (1995) • Carne trémula (1997) • Todo sobre mi madre (1999) • Hable con ella (2002) • La mala educación (2004) • Volver (2006)