A young woman's attempt at changing her life leads her to deciding she'd be better off as a nun. In her quest for enlightenment she discovers that the road to being closer to the Lord is a long painful one.
The movie starts out with our star Sarah, played by the lovely Tiffany Shepis, who's arrived at a convent on a rainy night in hopes to take her vows to be an ordained nun. She's greeted with harshness and strict rules, then is told to get naked to change into her robes, while the other nuns watch. One of the sisters notices a tattoo of a pair of dice on her hip and freaks out, going on a rant about being only one with God.
The next day she's brought down to a disgustingly dirty room and told to strip, again, then is slightly examined and cut inside her ears, placing her almost deaf. Well that doesn't taint her faith, she prays and prays when all of a sudden she has a vision of two men fighting over an orchard. Zip zoom, a couple cuts and we see an old man reading scripture while Sarah writes on a wall in coal. Now mind you it's in a vision she's having but all of a sudden a piece of the coal she's using in her vision falls out of her hand and lands next to her in reality. The vision freaks her out, so badly that she throws up... milk? We find that it's her first test, to "hear" the Lord, which she does, I think.
 
She keeps having strange visions about a woman having a baby in which the girl's father has a bag of flour on his table, turns around for a second then turns back to see the bag has fallen and the name Ninfa written in the flour on the ground, to which the guy claims he'll name his child just that. Anyways while in labor the man notices the walls bleeding and freaks out, bringing in his scriptures and reading them to his daughter, I guess purifying her. The baby is born and the man takes the baby into the room in which he saw blood dripping from the door prior to the birth, then goes back into the birthing room to find that his daughter is dead. The guy shrugs it off like it's no big deal then drags his wife into the same room and goes on with his business. A couple shots later and the guy's talking back in the orchard with the guy that's trying to claim his side of the property, only to find himself knocked the hell out by the man's hoe and shoved into a shed. When the man comes to he follows a luring stench into a room where the old man's daughter and tons of dead animals are, then realising he's trapped. So reading his scriptures and going all crazy he keeps the beaten man in the room that dripped blood, feeding him raw meat and claiming that the Lord needs him. We soon realise that the man does have some special purpose, a really jacked up one.
Throughout the rest of the movie Sarah has to go through more tests like the one I just posted. All together she must "hear" the Lord, "see" the Lord, "touch" the Lord, and "speak" to the Lord. Throughout each test she's pushed to the extreme in many ways being physically hurt to the ability for her to pass each test, the entire time having messed up visions.
If I go any further I'll give away too much. Put in a lesbian sex scene, torture and bloody crackling doors and you have a pretty damn good movie in my opinion. At first I thought it was going to be a remake of Sacred Flesh but it turned out to be a pretty damn good movie with a good story and a great ending. I'd say minus the lesbian scene this movie is pretty sharp and effective. The question that kept ringing in my head was "How does any of this have to do with being closer to the Lord?" but it all works out in the end with an ending that shocked me quite a bit, though it should have been predicted. Though confusing as hell it's a great watch with great visuals and Tiffany friggin Shepis, who did a great job as Sarah.
The road to enlightenment is a really messed up little dirt pile, glad I've chosen darkness.
Not personally my favorite type of movie, being of religious nature, but not a bad movie, leaves you to wonder what exactly is happening inside the convent in the process of Sarah's initiation into sisterhood. The only question I have is why it's called Nympha on the cover but the girl's name is Ninfa in the movie, strange. Anyways it's definitely worth a watch, at least once.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2007
DIRECTOR: Ivan Zuccon
WRITING CREDITS: Ivo Gazzarrini
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Giuseppe Gobbato, Tiffany Shepis, Francesco Primavera
COUNTRY: Italy
RUNTIME: 92 min
RATING: 6/10
Nympha Website/IMDB Click here
Nympha Trailer Click here
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