Dark Habits - Production

Production

After making Labyrinth of Passion Almodóvar was approached by Hervé Hachuel, a multimillionaire who wanted to start a production company to make films starring his then girlfriend Cristina Sánchez Pascual. He set up Tesauro Production and asked Almodóvar to write a film with her in mind. The idea behind the commission became the concept for the style of the film. Almodóvar explains: I came up with the story of a girl who drives both men and women wild, a girl who sings, drinks, takes drugs, occasionally goes through periods of abstinence and has the extraordinary experiences one would never have were one live a hundred years...while writing I had in mind Marlene Dietrich’s work with Josef von Sternberg, especially Blonde Venus (1932), where she plays a house wife who becomes a singer, spy and prostitute, who travels the world living a life of never ending adventure. This was the film Almodóvar intended to make, but Cristina Sánchez Pascual had limited acting skills, because of this, Almodóvar rewrote the film giving a more prominent role to the nuns of the convent where the singer hides.