Directed by Anca Hirte, this 2011 Romanian/French documentary was filmed at the Văratec Monastery in north-east Romania. Teodora is a 24-year old novice in the Romanian Orthodox Church and the film follows her journey to full membership of her convent after 11 years as a probationer. Having shown the requisite discipline, obedience and piety, the mother superior deems her ready to embark on the next stage of her spiritual journey. Teodora’s only concern is that she might be told her name has been changed, as she loves Teodora and would like to keep it if possible. Even that, though, she would be willing to sacrifice if necessary. Mother superior teasingly holds off until the last minute, but allows Teodora to retain her name.
The admission to full membership is of course cast in the form of marriage to Christ. The sexual repression inherent in the vow of chastity paradoxically holds within it an erotic component (frankly not helped by the scene in which a standing priest puts his stole over the kneeling Teodora whose face is thus uncomfortably close to his person). Much of the language is the same that would be used when referring to an earthly lover. Teodora is repeatedly reminded by her mentor, an older nun assigned to guide her, that this is an irrevocable step: she confirms her commitment and professes herself ready. She acknowledges her sins, for we are all sinners, and asks God’s forgiveness.
While Teodora’s preparations for her wedding are the focus, an incidental portrait of the convent and the surrounding community emerges, though it is difficult to know how representative it is of daily life, especially for those who have taken their vows. The nuns do agricultural work, but it doesn’t seem to be a big part of their lives. Theodora reads a lot, they have fun out in the snow, and there is much inconsequential and somewhat self-conscious chat, the nature of which hints at their narrow existence. It emerges that adopting the religious life is not always popular with family, and stories are told of parental resistance to a young woman’s desire to become a nun. Teodora has no such problems, and as a novice is still able to mix with family, eating meals with them, and they support her wish to enter the order.
Singing is a significant component for the nuns, as is bell ringing, during which a couple of sisters work up an attractive glow. There is also drumming, which is a surprise and feels more pagan than Christian, one of the nuns using hammers on a huge block of suspended wood to beat out a hypnotic rhythm. Hirte is not afraid to focus a tight close-up on sensual full lips singing, representing the sublimation of earthly desire into selfless religious celebration.
When Teodora takes her final vows and is accepted as a full member, it is a community event, with a large lay attendance to watch, and record, the ceremony. However, it is a wedding without the trappings of vanity which accompany a secular ceremony, with the bride emphasising her sexuality and desirability. Instead, she is dressed in the regulation black shapeless garment, redolent of mourning, not joy, designed to hide those earthly aspects seen as the sinful counterpoint to her spiritual essence. Far from being the centre of attention when approaching the altar, she is hidden within the voluminous garments of a sister as she creeps to where the priest is standing, to show her subservient status. At the wedding breakfast, while the priest and the other nuns tuck in, Teodora sits in the corner, ignored and not eating at all.
How Teodoora came to be chosen for the film is unclear, but her outward beauty carries within it a sense that it is an index of inner purity (she manages to look ethereal even dressed in her unflattering habit). Her selection may have been by chance, or it could have been a calculated choice made by the Church hierarchy to show how much she is giving up, thus how pious she is, and by implication that the Church is worth that degree of devotion. Her renunciation of the secular world is all the more striking for it. One wonders how the film would have worked with a less photogenic participant, and quite how poignant it would have felt.
Hair features prominently in Păcătoasa Teodora, as she has beautiful locks her fellow nuns groom a lot. Just as hair frames the face, Teodora’s frames the film, which opens with her tresses being brushed and expertly plaited. At the very end we return to the same scene, and see why: the long plait is cut off: to mark her transition from novice to nun. A key marker of femininity is excised as a reminder that a nun’s priorities lie elsewhere. It is an indication of a propensity to view the film in symbolic terms that a few strands of silver in Teodora’s hair in a close-up become freighted as a hint of earthly decay.
Perhaps it was not intentional, but the close-ups of Teodora’s face put me in mind of Carl Theodor (how appropriate) Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, but where Falconetti’s face is agonised, Christ-like in her suffering, Teodora’s is calm, serene, her vision turned inwards much of the time as, in modest pose with downcast eyes, she contemplates her forthcoming wedding. These are two vastly different views of unwavering commitment, but they achieve similar levels of intimacy.
One’s attitude to this film will in large part be influenced by prior views of the Church and of the cloistered life. Those predisposed towards the Church are likely to find it uplifting, full of spiritual grace and service for the glory of God. Those who are not will consider Teodora far from being a sinner and the wedding ceremony a parody shorn of the full implications of a union between two people, being one which can never be physically consummated; a waste that a young woman in the prime of her life should choose such a constrained existence and willingly forgo so much in this life, on the promise of one to come that may never materialise.
