Review of Laurent Tirard’s film “Sister, act!”

At the box office – Laurent Tirard’s film “Sister, act!” (Juste ciel!), at the very least trying to revive the great tradition of French eccentric comedy. According to Mikhail Trofimenkov, the adventure was not a success, but, of course, thanks for the try.

The natural desire is to rain down thunder and lightning on the heads of the distributors who betrayed the original title of the film, translated as: “My God!” or “Lord have mercy!” Instead, they copied the title of Emile Ardolini’s comedy “Act, Sister!” (1992) with the magnificent, regardless of what kind of garbage they play, Whoopi Goldberg and Harvey Keitel. There, the FBI hid – as part of the witness protection program – a pop singer, a friend of a mafia boss, in a monastery, where she cheerfully organized progressive amateur music performances.

In Tirara’s film, no one is hiding anyone in the monastery. Everyone seemed to be there of their own free will. Except for one heroine, who loves to chat on a smartphone prohibited in the Benedictine monastery and blaspheme, the question that remains unanswered is how she ended up there and what she’s doing. Instead of choir singing spirituals and hip-hop, the nuns have a much more responsible mission with a capital M. They must win a bicycle race along the picturesque serpentines of southern France in order to get money to help an unfortunate hospice.

First, they are confronted by the men’s team led by a mustachioed and flabby macho. But after the nuns send all his charges to the hospital during a massive road accident, which they didn’t exactly provoke, but “it just happened,” the lout will be imbued with sympathy for them and leave the game. However, his fighters will be replaced by a team of other nuns of a completely totalitarian – if not fascist – type, hungry for money for the moral rehabilitation of yesterday’s prisoners.

To be honest, the moral dilemma that Tirard offers in a comic form is questionable. “What, rehabilitation?” – the indignant mind of the good nuns boils: after all, among the clients of the bad nuns there are murderers and rapists. Not too politically correct. However, these young ladies will also be able to be taken out of the game, albeit in a not very correct way. Vulgar, rude, stupid? Come on, it’s not the French school of comedy to make such claims. A good half of the films with Louis de Funes are vulgar and stupid, but that’s not why we love them. The trouble is that there are no new de Funes or, say, Annie Girardot in the desert of French comedy.

If you think about it, the distributors, by assigning someone else’s name to the film, played a witty game. After all, “Sister, act!” – nothing more than creative theft. Tirard obviously seems to think that no one remembers Pedro Almodóvar’s early masterpiece “The Immodest Charm of Vice” (1983), filmed long before Ardolini’s joke, which in turn shamelessly stole plot moves from the Spaniard.

Almodovar also had a singer hiding in the monastery: her lover died of an overdose. The monastery turned out to be a garden of pleasures. The nuns snorted cocaine and languished in lesbian passions. And Mother Superior still kept a tame tiger. Tirard tries to imitate Almodóvar, but he does not have the courage or talent to do so. However, what to expect from a director who became famous, in particular, to put it mildly, with the disastrous film “Asterix and Obelix in Britain” (2012).

Tirard’s imagination was only enough to depict his mother abbess in all her glory, albeit without the tiger. In some way – in the good sense of the word – she subtly resembles Piglet from the Soviet cartoon about Winnie the Pooh. And she’s a drunkard, adding “wolf berries” to her wine. And a tattooed ex-motorcycle gang member. And an ex-drug dealer. And she came to faith after a black colleague shot her in the heart, and ended up in the Bible, which, again, it is unclear where and why was kept on the slut’s chest.

Tirard, however, steals not only from Almodovar, but also from Quentin Tarantino.

The only, but only for a while, sympathetic and original character in the film is an elderly nun who has taken a vow of silence. Her habit of writing down whatever she wants to say is amusing for a while. But, damn it, it’s immediately clear: this character was invented in order to start talking closer to the end. She just has absolutely nothing to say. As does, God have mercy, director Tirard.