Florinda Bolkan is striking as the title character here, a young woman forced by her overbearing, reactionary father into life in a convent. Over time, she becomes incensed by what she sees and experiences, and is further spurred into action by her friendship with fellow man-hating nun Sister Agatha (Maria Casares). Then she sides with a band of invading Muslims - taking up with one of their number, Ahmed (Anthony Higgins) - leading to bloodshed as she goes about seeking revenge.
"Flavia, the Heretic" is one of those 70s Euro-cult films that attempted to have it both ways. It is both a bold feminist statement and a soft-core exploitation film, with abundant nudity and violence. However, people looking for pure sleaze who seek this one out will have a bit of a hard slog, as it IS slowly paced and delivers most of the goods in its second half. Indeed, there is a whole portion of the film, later on, that seems to forget about story and concentrates on titillation.
Overall, the film is fairly successful, if not quite what some people might want it to be. It does have some powerful and memorable moments to experience: an animal castration, the torture of one poor women's breasts, the final cringe-inducing punishment in the dying minutes, etc. It does work largely due to the power of Bolkans' performance as a woman motivated to righteous fury by not just mans' inhumanity to man, but his repeated nasty mistreatment of women. There are a couple of male characters here so vile - including a French duke played by Greek actor Spyros Fokas - that we enjoy seeing their comeuppance. And at the same time, this viewer found Sister Agatha so amusing that it was a shame when she inevitably came to be written out of the picture.
The whole cast is very fine: Claudio Cassinelli as nice Jewish guy Abraham, Diego Michelotti as Flavia's rotten father, Raika Juri as Sister Livia, etc. And the filmmaking is solid - not particularly flashy, but on the money in its period recreation. And the score by Nicola Piovani (future Oscar winner for "Life is Beautiful" (1998)) is haunting and lovely.
This was the only narrative-driven feature by Gianfranco Mingozzi, who usually specialized in documentaries, but it sure is a doozy.
Seven out of 10.
"Flavia, the Heretic" is one of those 70s Euro-cult films that attempted to have it both ways. It is both a bold feminist statement and a soft-core exploitation film, with abundant nudity and violence. However, people looking for pure sleaze who seek this one out will have a bit of a hard slog, as it IS slowly paced and delivers most of the goods in its second half. Indeed, there is a whole portion of the film, later on, that seems to forget about story and concentrates on titillation.
Overall, the film is fairly successful, if not quite what some people might want it to be. It does have some powerful and memorable moments to experience: an animal castration, the torture of one poor women's breasts, the final cringe-inducing punishment in the dying minutes, etc. It does work largely due to the power of Bolkans' performance as a woman motivated to righteous fury by not just mans' inhumanity to man, but his repeated nasty mistreatment of women. There are a couple of male characters here so vile - including a French duke played by Greek actor Spyros Fokas - that we enjoy seeing their comeuppance. And at the same time, this viewer found Sister Agatha so amusing that it was a shame when she inevitably came to be written out of the picture.
The whole cast is very fine: Claudio Cassinelli as nice Jewish guy Abraham, Diego Michelotti as Flavia's rotten father, Raika Juri as Sister Livia, etc. And the filmmaking is solid - not particularly flashy, but on the money in its period recreation. And the score by Nicola Piovani (future Oscar winner for "Life is Beautiful" (1998)) is haunting and lovely.
This was the only narrative-driven feature by Gianfranco Mingozzi, who usually specialized in documentaries, but it sure is a doozy.
Seven out of 10.