TWISTED Sisters Invention and Isolation in Foxtel’s Lambs of God
From its opening moments, the four-part 2019 Foxtel miniseries Lambs of God feels different. With its dilapidated convent at the top of a steeply plunging cliff on an island, it presents an immediate juxtaposition – the sheer logistical scope of such a striking visual sitting alongside the delicate and quiet intimacy of its (initial) three-piece acting ensemble. Through this establishing image, Lambs of God immediately sets itself up as a chilly work of the Australian Gothic. When we first see the faces of the sisters of St Agnes at its core – Sister Iphigenia (Essie Davis), Sister Margarita (Ann Dowd) and Sister Carla (Jessica Barden) – their skin is windswept pink, the capillaries on their faces blushing with colour against the grey woollen caped smocks they wear. Here is another juxtaposition in a series made up of them.
The three sisters live at the apparently disused convent, subsisting on food they grow in their garden and making sacrifices to a statue of St Agnes that is overrun with vines and battered by coastal storms. They live by candlelight, eat with their hands, and take turns telling stories as they knit, dye and loom; the time in which they live is vague, their contemporary lives easily misinterpreted as one plucked from centuries ago. The arrival of a priest, Father Ignatius (Sam Reid), however, has both the sisters and the audience rushing directly into the
