Sister Smile

Back in late 1963 a Belgian nun known only as Soeur Sourire or Sister Smile topped Americas pop music charts with the relentlessly cheerful tune Dominique from an album of 12 songs that sold 15 million copies From the little that is known of the illfated nuns life Italybased American writerdirector Roger Deutsch has made the boldly speculative yet persuasive Italianlanguage film Suor Sorriso in which the nun Ginevra Colonna emerges as a tormented unstable woman who abruptly left the convent after her recording triumph before taking her final vows Running a shelter for wayward girls she and another exnun Simona Caparrini enter a passionate tumultuous and destructive affair Colonnas volcanic Deckers craves spiritual redemption as well as the other womans love but is so beset by demons that she embarks on a flamboyant drugfueled downward spiral that ultimately engulfs her lover as well as herself