Feminist film studies tend to focus on Ida Lupino's early features - I think critics prefer to study noir rather than comedies - but this is interesting and fun, and very female focused: the original writer was female (a Peggy from Mad Men type), the bulk of the cast are female, women drive the action.
It's about antics of two friends at a convent school over a number of years: Hayley Mills and June Harding. There's a series of adventures - they get busted smoking, pull pranks, fight and support, and gradually come to see the nuns are alright. It was a good choice for Mills who smokes and mucks up but is basically good. I didn't quite buy she'd take vows at the end... the character just seemed to have too much life. But I figured it's something a directionless kid with lousy male role models might do.
The film is sympathetic to nuns lives in its way - the rituals, the death of a nun. It's quite sensitive.
Jim Hutton makes a cameo (he totally suits the world of this sort of movie), and Camilla Sparv plays a nun. They should turn this into a TV series.
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