The Convent

If you reach for your revolver when you hear the word "art," give this one a miss. Whip together Faust, a search for the true identity of Shakespeare and some chilly scenes from a bourgeois marriage. Fold in a quest to discover which of six suspects is Satan in disguise, season liberally with self-conscious symbolism, and you've got Manoel de Oliveira's THE CONVENT. John Malkovich is out to prove that the Bard was really a Spanish Jew named Jacques Peres. The documents he needs may be in the library of an ancient nunnery, which he visits with his beautiful wife (Catherine Deneuve) in tow. Their host (Luis Miguel Cintra) is positively Mephistophelian, and two...