The plot follows a cabaret singer who finds refuge in a convent of eccentric nuns, while the film is an exploration of the anachronistic situation of institutionalized religion in contemporary Spanish society.
The mission of the order, called the Humiliated Redeemers (Redentoras humilladas), is to offer shelter and redemption to fallen women.
The nurturing Sister Damned compulsively cleans the convent and coddles all the animals under her care, including an overgrown pet tiger that she treats like a son, playing the bongos for him.
The over-curious Sister Sewer Rat gardens and secretly, under the pen name Concha Torres, writes lurid novels about the wayward souls who visit the convent.
The unassuming Sister Snake, with the help of the priest, tailors seasonal fashion collections for dressing the statues of the Virgin Mary.
The Mother Superior is a heavy drug user and a lesbian, whose charitable work is a means of meeting needy young women.
This film's cast features many of Almodóvar's favorite leading actresses: Julieta Serrano, Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredes and Chus Lampreave.
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 to live a hundred years[3] ... 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.
Comparing Dark Habits with his first two films, Almodóvar has suggested there is a change of tone and that the emotions are expressed more clearly while the characters are driven by them.
[7] Francoist Spain, strongly supportive of the Catholic Church, had promoted sentimental films, such as Sister San Sulpicio and Miracle of Marcelino, in which good-hearted priests and the like figured prominently.
Together with musicals and light comedy in which nuns appeared, they were part of a propaganda attempt to make Spanish cinema feel good and new.
[7] He also made the point that, for him, melodrama is a form in which love and passion are the driving force that oblige individuals to do the most extraordinary things, whether they be appalling or wonderful.
[9] Reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Les Anges du Péché, Almodóvar's idiosyncratic fusion of highly formalized, often surreal visual imagery (saturated primary colors, muted and diffused lighting, kitschy interiors) and comedic melodrama, serves as a thematic foil in order to explore crises of faith and the innate hypocrisy and encroachment of secularism in institutional religion: the ironic reunion between the successful call girls and the destitute nuns selling an odd assortment of goods (cakes, flowers, and peppers) at the market; the melancholic and sentimental ballad of unrequited love and loss that covertly expresses the Mother Superior's spiritual crisis; Yolanda's facial imprint on a handkerchief that serves as a surrogate relic for the Shroud of Turin.
Through the convent's bizarre and misguided attempts to spiritually reconnect through escapism, distraction, and illusion, Dark Habits reflects the inherent incongruence and corruption of seeking redemption and existential purpose in an increasingly chaotic, amoral, and hedonistic world.