MOVIE: SISTER SMILE

It is not often I am moved to use words like powerhouse and tour-de-force, but for Cecile de France’s performance in director Stijin Coninx’s latest feature Sister Smile (soeur SOURIRE), I am willing to make an exception. de France drives the film with her charming, emotional and intelligent take on the life of Jeannine Deckers, known throughout the world as the singing nun. The biopic traces Deckers life from her adolescence with her overbearing family to her time spent in a strict Dominican convent, where she writes her hit Dominique, a song which would go on to outsell both the Beatles and Elvis, to her stormy later career, which was fraught with both financial and personal trouble. A brilliant take on a unique and moving life, Coninx’s Sister Smile is not to be missed. Whether you are familiar with Deckers or not, her life as a nun, pop star, early feminist and tormented lover is bound to capture audiences as much as the woman herself. (KB)