The Nun review

Life as a French nun

Why you can trust 12DOVE Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Nun, Interrupted would also have worked as a title for this stylish but scattershot French historical drama.

Suzanne Simonin (Pauline Etienne) isn’t religious, but that doesn’t stop her family sending her to a convent where she’s degraded and humiliated – and things get even worse when she comes under the glare of Isabelle Huppert’s rapacious mother superior.

Though Etienne and Huppert are fantastic, Guillaume Nicloux’s adaptation of Denis Diderot’s novel is neither nunsploitation nor chamber piece, just about working as a sermon on hypocrisy.

Decent, but no Black Narcissus .

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.