Love letters from a Portuguese nun
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Love letters from a Portuguese nun |
| Original title | Love Letters of a Portuguese Well |
| Country of production | Germany , Switzerland |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1977 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jesus Franco |
| script | Jesus Franco, Erwin C. Dietrich |
| production | Erwin C. Dietrich |
| music | Walter Baumgartner |
| camera | Peter Baumgartner |
| cut | Marie Luise Buschke |
| occupation | |
| |
Love Letters from a Portuguese Nun is an exploitation film belonging to the Nunsploitation genre by the Spanish director Jess Franco from 1977 . The plot is loosely based on a literary template by Soror Mariana Alcoforado .
The German premiere took place on March 10, 1977.
action
On a beautiful summer day a long time ago, 16-year-old Maria Rosalia is romping through the Portuguese forests with an 18-year-old friend. You will be watched by a clergyman. He reveals himself to be Father Vincent. He persuades Maria to feel guilty about her fornication and goes with her to her mother, a poor laundress. The young girl's soul can only be saved in a special monastery monastery. The father relieves the mother of the last of her savings and takes Mary with him to the monastery. There the superior, who can be called “High Priestess”, first establishes Mary's virginity and appoints Father Vincent to be the protector and disciplinarian of her body and soul. During a confession, the father coaxed some secrets out of her. However, she does say that she dreamed that. Nevertheless, the priest gets sexually excited and condemns Mary to three days of wearing a wreath of thorns. The wreath is laid on her by the abbess on the same day. This is followed by some lesbian excesses in the monastery walls, which are laid out in such a way that Maria has to hear them and, in their simple-minded innocence, interprets them as dreamed sex fantasies, whereupon she is persuaded to feel more guilty. A little later, her boyfriend shows up at the monastery and wants to take her home. Maria thinks herself guilty and wants to endure further purification in the monastery. After a while, however, she wrote a letter to her mother in which she confessed that she would go with her now if the boy came back. The letter is intercepted by the monastery chief with the help of a fellow sister and Maria is quoted for a "conversation" with the abbess and the priest. Because of the writing, Maria gets deeper and deeper into the entanglements. She is sentenced to spend the next time in the dungeon, whereupon she stripped of her nun's costume and locked in a kind of cupboard. During this time she has to satisfy the priest orally. One night a ceremony is held for her in which she is deflowered and deflowered by Satan. This night, too, she is later persuaded as a dreamy outgrowth of her vice. A short time later, she escapes from the monastery and turns to the local mayor. But she doesn't believe him and brings her back to the monastery. This attempt to escape is punished again. This time the monastery management brings Maria to the regional inquisitor, before whom she confesses everything and makes the monastery superiors responsible. She is sentenced to death at the stake on the basis of the confession. But because she has made an accusation against others, the inquisitor wants to initiate a new investigation, unless the accused have Maria sign a paper on which she withdraws. Maria is now tortured until she signs the slip. Soon after, she is in a prison awaiting execution. She writes a letter to God because no one else is listening to her. She describes what happened and apologizes to her master. She then desperately lets the letter blow out of the window, falling at a prince's feet. This is an enlightened, modern prince who has been going against the grain of the witch burns for a long time. He prepares everything and saves Maria from the already smoking pyre the next day. The film then ends when the prince reads her letter and shortly afterwards those responsible, Father Vincent and the high priestess, are arrested by his soldiers.
Production notes
After Erwin C. Dietrich had already had several successes as a distributor in the wake of the wave of nunsploitation, he planned his own film in this genre. He was drawn to the Portuguese Letters from 1669 by Jess Franco, which were attributed to a nun named Mariana Alcoforado. On this basis, Franco realized the film in Portuguese locations, and Dietrich advertised it with the words "banned and ostracized for three centuries: filmed for the first time!"
Dietrich's graphic artist Georges Morf provided the poster motif with a phallic church tower between bared nuns' breasts. Love letters from a Portuguese nun ran all over Europe, and a little later Cartas de una monja portuguesa aka Cartas de Amor de una monja by Jorge Grau, who also referred to Alcoforado's letters, appeared.
Reviews
The lexicon of international films writes that the production offers "an abundance of inconsistencies, obvious mistakes and dilettantism" .
Web links
- Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Review by Carsten Henkelmann on senseofview.de
- Love letters from a Portuguese nun in the European Girls Adult Film Database
- Love letters from a Portuguese nun on filmforen.de
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Love letters from a Portuguese nun in the Lexicon of International Films
- ^ Benedikt Eppenberger, Daniel Stapfer: Mädchen, Machos und Moneten , Verlag Scharfe Stiefel, pp. 110/111