The Convent

In which eccentric veteran Oliveira transcends wackiness and achieves utter tosh. US professor Malkovich and wife Deneuve visit a remote Portuguese monastery to research his thesis that Shakespeare was in fact a Spanish Jew, and become embroiled in vaguely sinister sexual shenanigans apparently engineered by the guardian of the place. What might have been an effective horror thriller or psychodrama is turned, by the director's endless erudite allusions to myth, literature and so on, into what looks like a mere blueprint for a more coherent, less tedious meditation on good and evil.