Concrete Playground

Sister Smile is a biopic about Jeanine Deckers, a singing nun who, in 1963, had a chart-topping hit in Europe and North America with her song Dominique, a jaunty little tune that goes like this: "Dominique, nique, nique, S'en allait tout simplement...Il ne parle que du Bon Dieu."

The song is a lot more upbeat than the tragic story behind it. After Deckers appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, she left the convent to try to launch a solo career and things quickly went downhill. She was unable to use the name Sister Smile because it belonged to her order , and her follow-up hit — a song in praise of contraception called Glory be to God for the Golden Pill — caused outrage. Jeanine Deckers' non secular life then descended into binge drinking and pill popping, ending in a suicide pact with her lover Annie, a detail this movie weirdly glosses over.

You would think that a movie about a drug-addled lesbian nun would be a hoot and a half, but it’s not really, instead it’s a little vague and plodding.