Joanna (Emily Beecham) is a pretty, articulate, free-spirited twenty-year-old. The world's her oyster – and yet the life choice that she makes absolutely scandalises her friends and family. Her mother (Amanda Donahoe) feels betrayed; her best friend is enraged; and her boyfriend is plunged into a profound depression. Does Joanna want to be a stripper? A prostitute? A Big Brother contestant? No. Joanna wants to be a nun. To be more accurate, it's not what Joanna wants that's really the problem. Her religious vocation isn't a matter of active desire: it's an itch that troubles her in spite of her best efforts to ignore it. Jan Dunn's film is unusual in its depiction of religious faith as neither a morally-driven lifestyle choice, nor a code of behaviour imposed by family or community, but as a deep yearning from within. Joanna's need to believe may be right or wrong, but it's there and she has no say in it. It's an unusual premise, one that reverses our expectations about the rebellious instincts of young people: surrounded by hedonists who want to tempt her into bad behaviour, Joanna is fighting for her right to be a cloistered celibate! Yet Dunn's sweet and engaging script doesn't attempt to pick apart Joanna's psyche, nor the specifics of the faith to which she chooses to attach herself. Having accepted its protagonist's religion as real to her, the film instead goes on to note that no mode of existence is without its challenges, hypocrisies and contradictions, and no community without its seething secrets. The convent that accepts Joanna as a novice looks idyllic, but proves to be home to a startling band of eccentrics – from wise, progressive Sister Ignatius (beautifully played by Brenda Blethyn) to nasty little gossip Sister Gertude (Rita Tushingham) – all supposedly presided over by a screwed-up, declining Prioress (Susannah York). Joanna may have removed herself from the busy business of the wider world, but her choices don't get any simpler behind the convent walls. Nor do the pressures of the outside world consent to stay where she has left them… Warmly accessible, but prepared to engage with sticky questions about sex, mental health and moral responsibility, The Calling is a stirring and unusual drama with a fine cross-generational cast of British actresses.