SUOR SORRISO [SISTER SMILE]

MONDAY 27 OCTOBER AT 9:20PM UGC SHAFTESBURY AVE SCREEN 2

Country Italy/Germany R/T 98 mins Format Super16 Dir Roger Deutsch Prod Wieland Schulz-Keil S'play Roger Deutsch, Francesca Terrenato DoP Giulio Pietromarchi Cast Ginevra Colonna, Antonio Salines, Simona Capparini P/S Roger Deutsch T +39 06 4542 4070 E rld@attglobal.net W www.homepage.mac.com/rldeutsch

This is the 'true' story of the Singing Nun - S?ur Sourire - who knocked the Beatles of the top of the charts in 1963 with Dominique, a tribute to the Patron Saint of her order, and sold millions of copies around the world. Hollywood even made a (crap) film about her rise in 1966, with Debbie Reynolds in the title role. Roger Deutsch's take on Jeanine Deckers' (her real name) decline is of a fairy story that goes wrong at every point from the moment she leaves the convent. Beautifully shot in luscious Super16 Jeanine emerges as a tortured soul, whose love for her father and dead mother is twisted and confused, and whose relationship with everyone she touches, especially her lover Clara, is chaotic and destructive. From the moment she meets Clara, she is crazy-jealous, bitter, her mind incapable of consistent emotion. She spirals into drugs, drink and wild abandon in her quest for happiness. Deutsch's direction is a dazzling mixture of approaches and styles, blending new wave moments and a section of animation with traditional drama, intense emotional confrontations and no shortage of comedy. Jeanine is a wild child who is tragically trying to tame herself; the inevitability of her decline and her ultimate fall, just when she's trying to do the right thing for once, is moody, moving and hallucinogenic. NS

Based in Italy, American born writerdirector Roger Deutsch produced and co-wrote Blank Generation in 1979 before making a string of award-winning shorts that include Jews and Dead People. He recently completed the featurelength doc Sancti Spiritus. Suor Sorriso is his first feature film.