Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1977) – AKA Die Liebesbriefe Einer Portugiesischen Nonne

ratio is flipped, with plot leading and sex a strong second. Dietrich still thought it too clothed and spliced in softcore inserts, some obvious from the brighter backgrounds during the Black Mass. Nudity and deviancy abound, though Franco shows unusual restraint — he even lays off the random zooms.

Here’s the thing, mate: this shouldn’t work, and yet. Susan Hemingway — a German actress born in 1960, so do the math and squirm accordingly — plays Maria with a big-eyed, milk-fed innocence that makes every violation land like a slap rather than a titillation. She nails both the girl’s inherent innocence and her steel-spined determination to stop the evil, and critics have singled out her performance’s intensity amid the sleaze. She’s naked a lot; there’s flogging, forced confession, a black-mass orgy, girl-on-girl “exercises” in the cloisters — soft rather than hardcore, but nastier in tone than most Eurotrash of the era. Watch it for Berger’s magnificently repellent priest, for Ana Zanatti’s proud, possessed High Priestess, one of Franco’s most fascinating villainesses, and for the fact that the Spanish Catholic Church once branded Franco among the world’s most dangerous filmmakers — after this, you’ll see their point about all that hypocrisy under the habit.