These scenes make up about a third or a quarter of the movie, as each priest and the caretaker are interviewed. The new priest's arrival and Sandoken's outbursts stir the pot, as soon the priests find themselves being interrogated by someone hired by the caretaker as a 'spiritual director', who works for the church and wants to speak to everyone separately and truthfully. More than once he describes what happened to him as a child, further testing the viewer. He is Sandoken, a troubled and bruised man who was obviously sexually abused as a child. At first he is a character yelling drunkenly outside the house, but later he becomes a pivotal character in the story. The viewer is immediately put to the test, as the obviously unstable man outside the house is crying out this new priests' name and recalling, in extremely graphic detail, their more intimate time together. However, their serenity and separation from their past evaporate as a fifth priest arrives with his own skeletons, not to mention a former altar boy following him. This though is a retirement home with a difference, as it is a house for priests with certain skeletons lurking in their closet. The home is run by a nun-turned-caretaker, and it functions as a sort of priest retirement home, with one clearly suffering from some sort of dementia. They live together in a secluded house and they are hidden from society the hours that they are able to go outside are very limited. One thing is certain very soon into EL CLUB Pope Francis and the Vatican would love to sweep this film under a rug, much like the estranged priests we meet. It is an ugly, almost taboo subject to talk about, causing this film to be all the more courageous and confronting.
I went to a Catholic school, and years after I had left it was reported that one of the priests working there as a principal had in fact had sexual affairs with minors. Unfortunately, child abuse and the Catholic Church go hand in hand, with offenders rarely being punished. Reviewed by punishable-by-death 8 / 10 A film that needed to be made
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