In cinemas now [PG]

Director: Stijn Connix

Runtime: 119mins

If you don’t know a great deal about Jeannine Deckers, the young Belgian woman who enjoyed a brief period of fame in the 1960s as The Singing Nun, you might well walk in to Sister Smile expecting a feel-good movie of some sort – I certainly did. The movie is a fictionalised account of Deckers’ rise to fame and subsequent fall from the spotlight; I wasn’t expecting groups of fresh-faced children skipping through alpine meadows (okay, I may have been just a little bit), but I definitely wasn’t prepared for anything as harrowing as this turned out to be. I’m not saying Sister Smile is bad – it’s actually very, very good – but as movies with singing nuns go, it’s definitely no Sound Of Music.

The film opens with Deckers as a gawky Catholic schoolgirl who has a burning ambition to travel to Africa as a missionary until one night when an awkward almost-kiss with a female friend sends her running for the safety of a convent. When life there turns out to be more regimented than she expected, Deckers begins to write songs for comfort. She agrees to record one of her catchier compositions as a favour to the church, signing over all the profits to them; within weeks, the song is a number one hit in the United States, and the world is clamouring for more. As I said before, though, this is not a happy movie – I’ll leave out any further details of Deckers’ life so you can find out for yourself, but suffice to say, her rapid rise to fame is followed by a protracted fall.

The period detail is gorgeous, and the script is matter-of-fact and unfussy, but Sister Smile’s greatest strength is lead actress Cécile De France, who gives a truly fine performance, portraying Deckers as a heartbreaking mix of earnest conviction and naiveté. Deckers’ relationship with her platonic best friend and eventual lover Annie (Sandrine Blancke) doesn’t get a great deal of screen time, but it’s central to the film nevertheless. Their tale, by necessity, has a sad ending, and while I’m a little tired of seeing same-sex couples portrayed as doomed, tragic figures in cinema (Brokeback Mountain is another tear-jerker that leaps immediately to mind), that’s another grumble for another day. Sessions in Brisbane are limited, so see this quickly before it closes.

****

ALASDAIR DUNCAN

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