Mother review Noomi Rapace is a fanatical Mother Teresa full of fury

"The convent is a pressure cooker in this fevered, energetic account of a pivotal week in the life of the young Mother Teresa, which jump-starts the Orizzonti sidebar at this year's Venice film festival. Macedonian writer-director Teona Strugar Mitevska ticks down the days from seven to one and wrings a performance of flayed, hard-bitten intensity from Noomi Rapace, who marches down the corridors with a face full of fury."

"If Mother Teresa never goes so far as to set about the sisters with an axe, the sense that she might injects Mitevska's film with a pleasing dose of danger. It is 1948, we're in the broiling heart of Kolkata and Sister Teresa has tired of her teaching role at the Loreto Entally convent. I'm a woman in a system run by men, she complains to sympathetic Father Friedrich (Nikola Ristanovski), although she has also heard a call from the big man upstairs."

"When her heir apparent, Sister Agnieszka (Sylvia Hoeks), admits that she is pregnant, Teresa is duly scandalised. She loves Sister Agnieszka but is repulsed by her, too. I would never jeopardise my mission for earthly pleasures, she declares in one of many examples of overly on-the-nose dialogue. Ahead of the film's premiere, Rapace billed the film as a punk-rock reframing of the 20th-century saint, although the handling is arguably more Euro-metal than punk."

Set in 1948 Kolkata, the story follows Sister Teresa as she grows weary of convent life and seeks Vatican permission to start an independent mission. Noomi Rapace delivers a flayed, hard-bitten performance that conveys fury and impatience. Tension erupts when Sister Agnieszka reveals a pregnancy, provoking scandal and moral revulsion. The director structures the narrative by counting down seven days to one, heightening pressure within the convent. A heavy Euro-metal-inflected soundtrack and scenes of headbanging give the piece a punkish tone. The portrayal exposes Teresa's intensity and danger but stops short of fully examining her motives.

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