Language: French
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

Spaniard Agustín Gómez-Arcos dipped his pen to write the flamboyant tragedy of Maria Republica in the blood of Francoism in the 1960s. In raw, sharp French, forged in the sweat of exile, he transforms the fate of this prostitute, contaminated by bad luck, contaminating by revenge, into that of a red whore, savage and rebellious, thrown into a convent to do repentance. There, in this place of penance more than of prayer, whose pestilential odor of order established by the fumigations of decorous religion is masked, Agustín Gómez-Arcos draws up shattered lives in a baroque statuary that fills the darkness with cries and of complaints.

While the law prohibiting brothels is promulgated, Maria Republica, a prostitute, eaten away by illness, finds herself on the street. The daughter of "reds" executed for setting fire to a church and vehemently opposing the powers that be, Maria is a dangerous and disturbing subversive element for her family, who support the new Order. His aunt Doña Eloïsa, a hypocritical petty bourgeois, whose meteoric rise in society is as much due to her adulterous excesses as to her unconditional support of the regime, intends to restore the family image and bring the lost sheep back on the right path. By paying a considerable dowry, Doña Eloïsa obtained a place for Maria in the convent of the "Regenerated of the Most Holy Right", a religious institution under the leadership of Church and State. Maria finds in front of the massive door of this convent-prison her aunt and her brother Modesto, who was taken from her in early childhood and whom she had not seen since. Modesto now occupies an important position within the Church and has become, thanks to a chosen education, one of the spearheads of the totalitarian regime. Her aunt and her once-loved and now lost brother embody everything Maria abhors and what she seeks revenge against.

By voluntarily entering the closed and prison labyrinth of the convent, Maria intends to destroy it from the inside. As time passes in the daily and inflexible repetition of a soul-crushing machine, Maria finds herself tasked by the Mother Superior, under the supervision of the Guardian Sister, to inoculate her dose of opiates to the Sister Psychologist. The latter is the true sibyl of the convent, a necromancer who clears the mysteries of the human spirit. Deprived of drugs, she ceases to be visionary and prophetic and becomes dangerously herself again, Mar, daughter of opponents and subversive element.

The rite of passage that marks Maria's ascension within the convent involves her total and irrevocable confession to the three Sisters Superior and the Reverend Mother. They summon to this voyeuristic and sadistic ritual a beggar whom they dress like a wild Christ, who becomes an actor in a mystical union. Witnessing the laying bare of Maria's soul and body, everyone abandons themselves to a surreal and unhealthy spiritualism session. By offering her body, Maria submits to the absurd game of confession and thus joins the elite of learned initiates. It is dressed in her white "recuperated" habit that she pays a last visit to the young novice Rosa on her deathbed.

She accompanies his last breath by telling him about her childhood dreams and giving him one last hope for freedom. In a burst of compassion, Maria lets her true motives emerge and her thirst for revenge bursts into the open, more unquenchable than ever. As an initiate, Maria can now join the other sisters for the convent's necromancy sessions. Sober and serious, the voice of the Sister Psychologist rises again. For the first time, it is not the morphine delirium that makes her speak, but it is her true voice, the voice of Mar, who challenges the Reverend Mother and courageously throws the bitter truth in her face. Mar was summarily executed on the spot and it was Maria who received this terrible honour. This act of unconditional adherence to the tyrannical Order of the Reverend Mother earned Maria the right to take her vows at an official ceremony organized in her honor, which was attended by her aunt Doña Eloïsa. Dressed in her new professed habit, Maria embraces the regime and adopts the distorted evangelical counsels of the Rule. The savage, tortured and mutilated Christ joins her in this macabre ritual to expire in her arms. Seizing the keys of the Guardian Sister to lock everyone up, Maria can savor her revenge by starting a vast purifying and liberating fire that will purge the convent of her torturous spawn. From the flames burst his name, opening the way to freedom.

Director: Gilles Rico (Director), Daniel Kawka (Music Conductor)
Cast: Ensemble Orchestra Contemporain, Maria Republica: Sophie Burgos, The Reverend Mother: Noa Frenkel, Soloists XXI