Flavia La Monaca Musulmana

Love, Sex, Pain, Satan!

The nunsploitation genre was something you would either read about or hear from connoisseur friends every once in a while. However, experiencing such genre without a proper guide can be brutally misleading as most of the films that fit the genre are a complete frantic boredom. Nevertheless, there are places you can go to get an education on the matter, and yeah, this is one of those places. 

it's funny how I got my hands onto Flavia, La Monaca Musulmana, AKA, Flavia The Heretic but since there aren't enough blogs where people talk about their personal lives like anyone cared, here goes my irrelevant story: Vancouver was under heavy snow and there wasn't much left to do after 4:00PM since the sun would go bye bye so friggin' early, out of nothingness,  I had a tremendous christmas days revelation: your blog lacks the nunsploitation films that shaped the genre! So, with a quick online research I found this half Italian, Half French gem that I will encourage you to watch on Christmas eve to add the evil touch to make a family reunion perfect.

Fuck in the name of Jeezus.

Dinner's ready!

Flavia The Heretic is a striking film, set in Italy somewhere around the 15th century. Definitely Medieval-era (though I don't think any specific year is ever given). This being the time of Christian ascendancy, the age is a time of utter madness, and the movie captures this very well.

Flavia, our protagonist, is a young lady who encounters a fallen Muslim on a battlefield. He seems a warm and intriguing fellow, and she's immediately taken with him. Her father, a soldier of a a family of some standing, comes along, almost immediately, and murders the wounded man right before her eyes. But she'll continue to see him in her dreams.

Praying in the nude it's better!

Take this you filthy vegans!

Her father ships her off to a convent that seems more like an open-air insane asylum--the residents, so harshly repressed by unyielding Medieval Christianity, slowly go mad. Flavia comes under the influence of one of the nuttier nuns. But in a mad world, only the sane are truly mad, and this sociopathic sister clearly recognizes the insanity around her. Her take on the times in which they live strikes a chord with Flavia, who, being young and apparently sheltered, is beginning to question everything about this world in which she finds herself trapped.

The movie is unflinching in its portrayal of that world, showcasing a lot of unpleasantness. We see a horse gelded, a lord rape one of the women of his lands in a pig-sty, the pious torture of a young nun. Through it all, Flavia observes and questions, rejecting, eventually, the Christian dogma that creates such a parade of horrors in terms that would gain the movie some criticism over the years for seeming anachronistic. I disagree with that criticism. Flavia's views, though sometimes expressed in ways that vaguely mirror, for example, then-contemporary feminist commentary (the movie was made in 1974), revolve around what are really pretty obvious questions. It is, perhaps, difficult to believe she could be so much of a fish out of water in her own time, but that's the sort of minor point it doesn't do to belabor. Flavia is written in such a way to allow those of our era, or of any era, to empathize with her plight. Getting bogged down on such a matter would be missing the forest for the trees.

Menstruation tastes better in the morning.

Nipple Fatality!

Flavia is heartened when the Muslims arrive, invading the countryside, and she finds, in their leader, a new version of the handsome Islamist who still visits her dreams. Smitten with her almost immediately, he allows her to virtually lead his army, becoming a Joan of Arc figure in full battle-gear, and directing the invaders to pull down Christian society, and wreak vengeance upon all those she's seen commit evil.

Is she the herald of a new and better world? She may think so, but Muslims of that era weren't big on feminism, either, as she soon learns the hard way. As they say, meet the new boss...

This is really just a thumbnail of some of the things that happen in FLAVIA THE HERETIC. The movie is quite grim, and with a very downbeat, rather depressing ending. Not a mass-audience movie at all, to be sure. It's quite good, though, and doesn't belong on the "nunsploitation" pile on which it is often carelessly thrown. I think there's much value in the final film, and I'm glad I watched it. 

Here's the entire movie thanks to Youtube: