Review: Novitiate
 

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There?s an early scene in first-time narrative feature director Margaret Betts? Novitiate ? a secular humanist drama about the religious passion of nuns, set in Tennessee in 1964 ? in which a teenage novice laughingly admits that Audrey Hepburn in The Nun?s Story inspired her to devote her life to the church.

That moment rings true, as Hepburn?s performance in the 1959 film has been credited with leading countless young women of the time down a path of religious commitment. Even more central to the historical context underlying Novitiate is the arrival of Vatican II during the year depicted in the film.?