The Calling

Synopsis
Joanna (newcomer, Emily Beecham) has had a secret calling to become a nun since the age of eight. She has tried to avoid it, coming from a non religious family but at the age of 22, about to graduate from university with her whole life ahead of her she has decided to submit to it and enter a closed order of Benedictine Nuns. Her best friend wants to sabotage her plans, her boyfriend is devastated and her mother (Amanda Donohoe) feels it’s just a phase. The only encouragement she gets is from the family’s religious housekeeper, Consuela (Harriet Thorpe). Everyone else thinks she is having a psychosis brought on by the guilt over an accident she may or may not have caused and compounded by their belief that it all stems from the anomaly removed from her brain as a child. When she finally gets to the convent, the liberalism of a politically active Novice Sister, Ignatious (Brenda Blethyn) and a bunch of women with border-line mental illness, including a psychotic Mother Superior (Susannah York) and an alcoholic football fan in charge of the vineyard (Rita Tushingham) at first makes her wonder if she’s following the right path after all but as she gets to know the Sisters and the enormous community bond they all share and the spiritual love that connects them she starts to see glimpses of her own spiritual fulfilment. Several weeks into her vocation she discovers she is pregnant, this revelation brings a whole new series of secrets out into the open until eventually the bond she has with Sister Ignatious dictates her destiny.

Production Details