Novitiate (**)

NOVITIATE doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be. For first-time writer/director Margaret Betts, the results are anything but stellar. The story focuses around the Catholic Church in the 1960's and the consequences of Vatican II. The rulings uprooted the traditional cloistered nuns who were used to tradition and humility. Betts wants us to understand why those values were so important but misses the point on a very fundamental level.

The story focuses on a young nun named Cathleen Harris (Margaret Qualley) who is raised in a non-religious southern household but slowly finds God through her times at Catholic school. Her mother is convinced that her decision to become a nun is simply an act of rebellion. For Cathleen, those peaceful moments found in Church felt like a deeper calling, and so she knows that a devotion to God is her one true calling.

Cathleen moves into the secluded convent on the outsets of town, a convent in which nuns live a life of poverty and are not allowed to leave the grounds. Cathleen is one of many young, bright girls who enter the program. They are given the title "postulant" and are at the mercy of the Mother Superior (Melissa Leo), the fiercely strict nun who uses corporal punishment and mental abuse to shape these young girls into quiet women of grace and humility. When we see a nun in public, they are peaceful, calm, and holy. This movie would have us believe that they are brainwashed to be obedient at the risk of self-flagellation an banishment.

Where Cathleen is our traditional "heroine" (and though she is utterly forgettable in a quiet, unaffected performance), it is Melissa Leo's character that is meant to provide conflict and structure here. At first she receives the documents that illustrate the Vatican's changes to the Church. She refuses to share them with her girls, fearful of what those changes might bring. We see her take out her frustrations on the postulants, yelling, screaming, kicking, and the likes. Leo is the standout in this film, channeling a character like Fletcher from Whiplash to become a sadistic and vindictive leader. Her final scenes try to shed light on her sadness (in a tearful speech to her fellow nuns). At times the role is over the top, and she stops just short of physically chewing on the scenery to make her point. In a film so dull, though, I think Leo is the only aspect I will remember as vividly.

The film takes side turns into the emotional toils that novitiates and postulants face on their journey to marry God. Themes are hammered in with no subtlety whatsoever, and an obnoxious film score leaves no moment of silence to meditate. We feel the inexperienced hands of director Betts over this story, and yet I can admire her for the attempt. This film felt like a 5 hour snooze and yet when it ended I realized no more than 2 hours had passed. We never understand these girls, their motivations. In the end we get a title card that tells us how many nuns left the Church after Vatican II. That would arguably make for a much stronger film. What we have here is a rehash of your standard psychological thriller without any stakes or motives.