Dark Habits

Almodóvar's third feature is slapdash, occasionally slow-moving, haphazardly plotted. That it's also wildly funny, bitchy, affecting and surreal is a tribute to his perennial warmth and wit. Nightclub singer Yolanda (Pascual) is impelled, via a bit of drug trouble, into the arms of the Mother Superior of the Convent of Humble Redeemers. Lying low in a spacious cell, decked with the trappings of Catholic kitsch, she finds the demands of the religious life needn't cramp her style too much: Sister Rat (the wonderful Lampreave) pens bodice-rippers, the Mother Superior jacks off in the privacy of her office, Sister Manure has LSD-fuelled religious ecstasies, and Sister Sin (Maura, radiant) is spotted from a bedroom window wrestling with a tiger. The whole thing winds up with the inevitable scandal and is almost completely silly; but as ever, Almodóvar's adoration of his female stars is heart-warming, and his visual style a delight.