Director: Laurent Tirard (France). Year of Release: 2022
The Jura area of France. It could be the present day, it could be a century ago. The camera pans over streams, fields and other scenes showing an absence of human activity. We end up panning in on a gardening nun. She looks down and cries out in excitement. She runs towards the nunnery, dropping tomatoes in her wake. She knocks on all the nuns’ doors, finally reaching the mother superior. Barely able to contain herself, she announces that she’s discovered an Edelweiß. Yeah, that’s it.
Das Nonnenrennen has attracted quite a few sniffy reviews, and it’s easy to see why. There’s a bit of 1970s sit-com about it – people getting awfully worked out about things which really don’t matter. And the plot is nothing out of the ordinary either. Basically, a group of nuns want to fund an old people’s home. But they’ve taken a vow of poverty, so they need to raise the money elsewhere. One of them sees a poster for a bike race with €25,000 prize. That’s all you need to know.
Mother superior Veronique seems pious enough, certainly compared to the other nuns. When they forget about why they’re in the convent, which is often, she brings them into line. But she also has her moments of weakness. Apparently the winning cyclists will also get an audience with the pope. Cue dream sequences in which Veronique fantasizes about taking selfies with His Holiness, and driving him around Rome in his Popemobile. She also has a childhood nemesis who we’ll meet later.
Each of the other nuns is given a back story. There’s Bernadette who’s been at the nunnery since anyone can remember. She’s committed herself to silence so only communicates by writing things on a board she carries with her. There’s Augustine – a short woman who looks demure, but she has a tattoo and used to be a biker. And there’s Beatrice, the woman with the Edelweiß who we met earlier. Beatrice once won a beauty pageant, but only after all the other competitors pulled out.
And then there’s Gwendoline. Gwendoline is an intern who has only just discovered that there’s more than one Testament. She has bee-sting lips, and the dungaree dress that she wears isn’t quite standard for full time nuns. We first see Gwendoline playing on the mobile phone which she smuggled into the convent. When Beatrice bangs on her door, she starts singing to drown out the noise, but the only religious songs she knows are Christmas carols.
Anyway, the nuns prepare for the bicycle race till they realise that they’re up against people who have actually done this sort of thing before. The nuns’ experience bike riding is variable, from Augustine who needs to invest in some stabilisers to Gwendoline who looks like she could be a handy cyclist with a following wind. After running over half of the opposition by mistake, there is a slightly irrelevant bit of Plot that means that they only really have to compete against each other.
Then Veronique’s nemesis turns up, accompanied by her own pack of nuns. Mother Joséphine de la Rédemption has been in competition with Veronique ever since nun school, and when they have competed, she has usually been the winner. Now, in contrast to Veronique’s group of inept nuns who struggle to tell one end of a bike from the other, Mother Joséphine’s troupe is immaculately dressed and able to perform tricks on their bikes at will. They are also less easy to force out of the race.
Nonetheless Plot intervenes once more, and we’re left with a final showdown between Veronique and Joséphine. Will Veronique finally be able to get one over against her great rival? Will the old people’s home be saved and Veronique finally get to meet Pope Francis? If you’re worried about that sort of question, well maybe this isn’t the right film for you. Inasmuch as anything happens in Das Nonnenrennen, it’s just to allow the characters to come forward and do something slightly silly.
There is something about nuns which is simply funny. I remember seeing Agnes of God, another nun film, quite a few years ago. It contains a scene of a group of nuns skating on a frozen lake in their habits and full nun’s regalia. There is no other dialogue, just nuns skating. I can’t explain why, but it just sticks in the mind as being objectively hilarious. Similarly, Das Nonnenrennen won me over simply by offering me the prospect of watching nuns on bicycles.
There are plenty of other scenes of sheer silliness. Bernadette falls down a mountain – twice, leaving behind a board on which she’s written “Aaaaaaaagh!” It is so obvious, it shouldn’t work at all, but the actors’ timing makes it somehow hilarious. Every so often, Gwendoline steps forward and does something to show that she is not really following a suitable career choice. The humour is obvious, but it manages to be so good natured that it’s hard not to laugh along.
Das Nonnenrennen isn’t a film with any depth. It does not surprize us, and limps along with a lightweight plot. But why should that always matter? It is fun, and it made me laugh, sometimes despite myself. I really hesitate to recommend it, as there is very little that I can concretely point to to explain why any of it is Any Good. At best there are the sight gags, but these only work by defying your expectations, so lose most of their humour if you try to explain why they are funny.
So, all I can say is, just go along and see it. If you’re having a good day, you may well be uplifted. If you’re not, and you don’t have the time for such fluffy nonsense, then it comes in at less than an hour and a half, so you’ll be soon free to move on to more earnest and worthy things. But you won’t necessarily have had a better day than someone who just sticks around to enjoy the silliness.
CinePhil 