General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Entre Tinieblas

Entre Tinieblas (released in English as Dark Habits) is a 1983 Spanish comedy-drama written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, in which a bolero (slow, romantic Latin love-song genre) singer takes refuge in a convent of eccentric, drug-using nuns after her boyfriend dies of a heroin overdose. It was his third feature film, produced by Tesauro, S.A., and it premiered at the Venice Film Festival before opening in Spanish cinemas on 3 October 1983.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title / international titles	Entre tinieblas; Dark Habits (English); in Italy released as El indiscreto encanto del pecado³
Director and writer	Pedro Almodóvar¹
Production	Tesauro, S.A., Spain, 1983; production by Luis Calvo; photography by Ángel Luis Fernández¹^•⁴
Premiere and release	Venice Film Festival, non-competitive section, 1983; Madrid premiere 3 October 1983²
Spanish box office	699,072.49 euros gross and 454,562 admissions (ICAA figures)⁵
Principal cast	Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Julieta Serrano, Marisa Paredes, Carmen Maura, Mari Carrillo, Lina Canalejas, Manuel Zarzo, Chus Lampreave, Cecilia Roth⁵
Spanish rating	Over 14 years of age per the ICAA certification; streaming platforms list it as 16+⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Yolanda Bell is a young bolero singer, drug-addicted, reckless and ambiguous. She watches her boyfriend, Jorge, die of an overdose of heroin that she herself supplied to him; the two had maintained a relationship of mutual annihilation and strained dependence. Frightened, she decides to disappear and takes refuge in the convent of Las Redentoras Humilladas (the Humiliated Redeemers), an order devoted for years to ministry among young women of wayward life. The Mother Superior had declared her admiration for Yolanda one night when she went to see her perform at the Molino Rojo nightclub.⁶

Inside the convent, Yolanda becomes the favorite of the Mother Superior and repeats with her the same game of self-destruction she maintained with Jorge, a game in which heroin is not absent. The community also includes a chaplain and four nuns with pointed names: Sor Estiércol, fond of LSD; Sor Perdida, obsessed with cleaning and the owner of a tiger; Sor Rata de Callejón, who writes cheap novels under a pseudonym in the manner of Corín Tellado; and Sor Víbora. Trouble arrives when Merche, a former lover of the Mother Superior who is fleeing the police, takes refuge in the convent.⁷^•⁸

Production and release

Almodóvar had previously made Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980) and Laberinto de pasiones (1982), after several works in Super 8. Entre tinieblas has been described as the last of his low-budget films, less trashy in some respects than his debut, and representative of an interim period in his career. In an interview in the reissue of Rafa Cervera's book Alaska y otras historias de la movida, Almodóvar said it was then that he first achieved recognition as a "director" from a sector that until that point had not taken him seriously.¹^•²

At the time of the Madrid premiere, Almodóvar joked that the film had been made in the style of Mad Max 2, "designed exclusively to make money and glory". The film was exhibited in a non-competitive section of the Venice Film Festival, where it obtained the applause of the public and a certain indifference from critics.² In Italy it circulated under the Buñuel-like title El indiscreto encanto del pecado.³

The ICAA file records a certified runtime of 110 minutes, the Cervantes reference gives 115 minutes, Filmin lists 100 minutes, and Spanish television broadcasts ran 96 minutes.⁵^•¹^•⁶^•⁹ The soundtrack includes the song "Suck It To Me" by Pedro Almodóvar and Fannymcnamara.⁵

Reception and commercial performance

According to ICAA figures, the film earned 699,072.49 euros in Spain and drew 454,562 spectators, continuing the rise in box office and attendance of Almodóvar's early films and consolidating the combination of social melodrama and pop esperpento that became one of his most recognizable traits.⁵^•¹⁰

Critical response was divided. The premiere-day review in El País called it an unusual film that few would have imagined possible a few years earlier, praising the duet bolero sung by the sinner and the Mother Superior and the work of the female cast, while noting that Almodóvar did not always master his cinematic translation.¹¹ The critic José Luis Guarner described it as "an impossible cross of Mexican folletín, Sara Montiel movie, Douglas Sirk melodrama and underground comic", with religious symbols treated with respectful irony.⁴ English-language reviews were cooler: Walter Goodman in The New York Times wrote that Almodóvar does not make everything work but that his ironic attitude toward conventional morality survives and the performances keep the characters from farce; Michael Wilmington in the Los Angeles Times found him being extravagant in a more conventional way.¹²

Themes and standing in Almodóvar's career

Religious references and sacrilegious episodes appear elsewhere in Almodóvar's work, but in Entre tinieblas they occupy the central place. The film has been read as a religious movie of a religiosity stripped of transcendence, in which God has been replaced by love and feelings, and its dominant red has been described as the director's gaze on his own religious upbringing.⁴^•¹³^•¹⁴

In the Spain of 1983, shortly after the Transition, a film about a convent ruled by a heroin-addicted, lesbian Mother Superior who extorts marchionesses carried the weight of a provocation bordering on political manifesto; the film appeared as such in the Reina Sofía exhibition "Poéticas de la democracia". The scene in which the Superior (Julieta Serrano) and her protégée (Cristina Sánchez Pascual) inject drugs in a room full of religious images remains its most explosive image.¹⁵ A later retrospective commentary called it perhaps Almodóvar's first great film, one that swapped eroticism for drugs.⁸

Homosexuality was already a subject in Almodóvar's cinema in Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980) and Laberinto de pasiones (1982), before Entre Tinieblas, and he developed the theme further in later work.¹⁶^•²⁰ Years later, the playwright and director Fermín Cabal staged a theatrical version with Beatriz Carvajal among its leads.¹⁷ In 1990, El País reported that the film had been censored in Argentina, where it had previously been shown complete in 1987 at a Cinemateca Argentina cycle dedicated to Almodóvar.¹⁸

Availability

The film circulates in a remastered high-definition version and is available on subscription streaming in Spain on Netflix and Movistar Plus+, and for rental on Filmin.⁶^•¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1939 to 1997

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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