It’s hard not to compare any new movie about nuns with “The Sound of Music” (1965) or one of Whoopi Goldberg’s most famous roles, “Sister Act” (1992). If our new offering opens outdoors, with a nun running, and singing along to the radio, the filmmakers are practically begging the comparison. With this playful wink, “Oh My Goodness! (Juste Ciel)” (Tull Stories), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, bursts into its brief, breezy journey, laughing all the way, in perhaps the lightest new-opening so far of 2025.
Three nuns, an apprentice, and their mother superior live at a Benedictine convent. Because their local hospice needs money, the nuns apply for a grant, but they are too late for this year’s funding—which has been awarded to a local cycle race. How about the nuns enter the race, win the prize, and give the money to the hospice? And so, we are off. Later on, a contingent from a rival convent arrives, uninvited, planning to compete with a team of their own.
Somehow the film is funnier because it is filmed in French, and is released in the U.K. with English subtitles. But this does create one potential problem for audiences here. The brain’s processing capacity is stretched thin by the need to add filmed-action (that we watch) to translation (that we read at the bottom of the screen), to produce comprehension. This occasionally feels too full-on. Changes of mood and character are invariably rapid, and the ideas—and gags—follow one another very quickly. It would be a great movie to see twice, for this reason.
Brisk movement from one scene to the next enables Mathieu Lamboley to devise an outstanding musical accompaniment to all the fun. Moving between organ, choral, ballet, jazz, French solo-artist, Catalan, Middle-Eastern, and even good-old–80s disco, the score hops and sings along with the nuns, while pausing for breath between scenes. The choice of music frequently produces a broad smile of recognition (“how funny!”)—one particularly good example is a fortissimo rendition of “Hallelujah!” from Handel’s “Messiah.” While not a musical, there are sing-alongs and lip-synch scenes; the constant movement of the actors feels almost like choreography, infusing the whole with the sense of a dance.
What is also pitch-perfect is the comedy. Take an early scene in which novice Gwendolyn, played by Louise Malek, is listening to her smartphone rather than praying in silence. When panicked by a knock at the door, she hurriedly tries to block the noise by singing a Christmas carol at the top of her voice. This sets up a fruitful double-act with Mother Superior Véronique, played by Valérie Bonneton, who has to inform hapless Gwendolyn that carols are only sung at Christmas time, not all year round. As penance for her smartphone, first she must read one of the gospels, and then, for an even bigger sin, the entire Old Testament; eventually leading her to ask, “How do you go about changing the Bible?” This also sets up one of the best sequences of all: “Jesus is not in the Old Testament,” “Jesus is everywhere,” met with knowing nods all round and huge laughs in the Playhouse. The idea that one of the other nuns is a reformed gangster, tats and all, and that another has taken a vow of silence and communicates with a whiteboard, which she hangs round her neck (and, by the way, can’t ride a bike), are milked for everything they are worth. The nuns always wear their full robes when cycling, sometimes to hilarious effect. Just occasionally, the filmmakers grow too fond of the slapstick, as if they are trying too hard, and risk the movie veering off path in an unproductive direction towards the “St. Trinian’s” series.
The mid-movie addition of childhood rival, fellow-Mother-Superior Joséphine, played by Sidse Babett Knudsen, is a smart way to nudge Mother Véronique into the centre of the film and to stay on track. The evolution of her character is convincingly portrayed in a superb performance by Valérie Bonneton. At the outset, she is pious, punitive, strict—all because, evidently, she lost a school spelling-bee to Joséphine. One of the funniest themes criss-crossing the entire film is Véronique’s dream to go to Rome to meet Pope Francis. The local abbot has dangled this additional personal prize for the mother superior of the winning cycling team. Of course, this is far more motivating for Véronique than the prize money for the charity. And so, because the end justifies the means, she confiscates Gwendolyn’s smartphone to photoshop the hospice residents to appear more ill than they really are, and to learn Spanish in advance of meeting the Pope. Later on, this more calculating persona becomes positively devious as her childhood competitiveness heats up: “She likes austerity? We’ll see how long she likes austerity! We’ll put her in the attic!”
True, Catholicism is not treated particularly reverently in “Oh My Goodness!” Recently, after the death of Pope Francis, “Conclave” was successfully re-released to cinemas to explain secretive Vatican rituals to the curious. Here, we have the polar opposite: the nuns conjuring up a campaign to unleash “the Catholic Church’s secret weapon: Guilt!” The habit of asking for forgiveness (usually after swearing) followed by repeatedly crossing oneself isn’t really the sense of the confessional; neither is starting the sacrament with the line “my behaviour has been exemplary recently, I must say.” Will some find the comedy risqué? Perhaps, but the film doesn’t remotely threaten the Catholic Church, and anyone seeking spiritual solace at a monastery won’t change their plans after seeing the film either. But the swearing is enough for the film to carry a 12A-rating—though the few children present at the screening I attended were laughing throughout and thoroughly enjoying the comedy.
“Sing-along The-Sound-of-Music” frequently still packs venues, 60 years after the release of the original. “Oh My Goodness!” grows confidently from this fertile soil into a very funny film which resists over-analysis. It’s best to just sink into one of the comfortable seats at the Playhouse and enjoy the light entertainment.
Adam Poole
17 May 2025
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