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Title: Novitiate (2017)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Melissa Leo | ... | Reverend Mother | |
| Lisa Stewart | ... | Sister Genevieve (as Lisa Stewart Seals) | |
 |
Alyssa Brindley | ... | Sister Kate |
| Chelsea Lopez | ... | Sister Charlotte | |
| Liana Liberato | ... | Sister Emily | |
| Eline Powell | ... | Sister Candace | |
| Margaret Qualley | ... | Sister Cathleen | |
| Morgan Saylor | ... | Sister Evelyn | |
| Rebecca Dayan | ... | Sister Emanuel | |
| Hannah Renèe Jackson | ... | Sister Anne | |
| Marco St. John | ... | Father Luca | |
| Julianne Nicholson | ... | Nora Harris | |
| Eliza Stella Mason | ... | Cathleen Age 7 (as Eliza Mason) | |
| Bill Shick | ... | Local Priest | |
| Danny Vinson | ... | Rob - Church Usher | |
1964. Cathleen Harris, in her late teens, has resided at the Convent of the Beloved Rose in her home state in the American south for close to two years, first as a postulant for six months, before taking her first vows to become a novice. Unlike the other postulants and novices, Sister Cathleen was raised in a household without religion, let alone Catholicism. As such, her decision to become a nun, which went against her divorced mother's wishes, may be more secure in her mind than her colleagues for which this life course may be more bred within them. The convent is led by the Mother Abbess, Reverend Mother Marie Saint Clare, whose entire life is this convent off of where she not stepped foot in forty years. Reverend Mother believes she is the voice of God within the walls of the convent, and thus does not tolerate any of the sisters questioning her authority. She also believes that the Catholicism which she has known all her life is perfect. When she receives an edict regarding the ... Written by Huggo
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Novitiate is not Audrey Hepburn's The Nun's Story, nor is it The Sound of Music, The Singing Nun, or countless other romances about happy nuns. It's closer to Doubt. This "expose" is merciless showing the almost Marines-like indoctrination of young girls, first to be postulants, then novices, then the real deal.
Although the film doesn't have drill sergeants, it has a super-committed Mother Superior (Melissa Leo). She will punish swiftly with, for instance, the girls kneeling to walk while saying Hail Mary's or disciplining themselves with knotted ropes. But the real torture is the interior questioning of the young women about even the existence of God.
Nevertheless they are moving to become "brides of Christ," which when they dress in bridal gowns for the actual marriage borders on satire, hokum, or downright pathos. As more than one postulant avers, "Where is He?" daily, the girls are giving themselves to God while not feeling the divine presence.
Perhaps the biggest problem is the emergence in the early '60's of Vatican II, that progressive body of prelates that liberalized the Church and demoted the nuns. So much for that disrespect as 90,000 pure souls took the last train outta there.
The central postulant, Cathleen (Margaret Qualley), has a tough time with her vocation, much less her attraction to another hopeful. The complications of sexual yearnings in young women is a nicely figurative way of showing the challenges of taking 17 year old girls from a normal life, which usually involves young men.
Cathleen's mother, Julianne Nicholson (Nora Harris), serves as the vox populi questioning the sanity of the process as she is losing her daughter to these unknown forces of religion. For Catholics, Novitiate is a confirmation; for non-Catholics it's a gloss on the complexity of Catholic faith.