Benedetta (2021)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
A 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with a novice. But it is Benedetta's shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its core.
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Virginie Efira (who had a supporting role in Elle) perfectly channels the alluring manipulations of Benedetta, and her performance belongs in the same conversations praising Vanessa Redgrave in The Devils (1971) or Lucyna Winnicka in Mother Joan of Angels (1961).
But “Benedetta” doesn’t match the transgressive, blasphemous heights of, say, Ken Russell‘s “The Devils” (in which it wasn’t merely a wooden doll being used as a dildo but a charred human femur), because it ends all its scenes with a wink and a nudge.
What Verhoeven takes from the story is the absolute corruption of the Church and the (im)possibilities of making a modern nunsploitation flick worthy of splitting a bill with Ken Russell's The Devils .
Well, we get scenes of Charlotte Rampling’s Mother Superior hunting down a wooden dildo shaped like the Virgin Mary, and a nude torture sequence involving devices and costumes inspired by either the Spanish Inquisition or David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers or both.
There’s a definite eeriness to the masculine vocalizations of Jesus through her person in sequences which recall the hysteria of The Crucible (1996).
The helmer operates in the same broad, manipulative strokes that Mel Gibson brought to “The Passion of the Christ,” reducing all but Benedetta to one-dimensional agendas.
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It’s these details that Verhoeven and David Birke‘s screenplay, which is adapted from a book based on the shook clerk’s writings, leans into heavily, and with Verhoeven on perhaps the most overtly tacky directorial form we’ve seen from him since “Showgirls” the defiantly secular miracle here is that any themes emerge at all.
Later in the film, during a love scene of mutual masturbation the sound effects are again surprisingly detailed, making the rather heightened erotic scene—though pretty restrained compared to Verhoeven’s swimming pool splashing sex in Showgirls —feel more explicit than it is.
Paul Verhoeven, at least, is a provocateur with pedigree, though I’ve never personally fallen for much beyond Robocop, as even in his best work, his baser instincts tend to leave a sour taste (the rape scene in Showgirls being the preeminent example of a sorry-I-just- can’t crossed line).
It’s long been known that Paul Verhoeven, the man behind such taboo-breaking movies as Basic Instinct , Showgirls and Elle , has been fascinated by the life of Jesus Christ.
Telling the true story of a lesbian Italian nun from the Middle Ages who had visions of Jesus, Benedetta is brought to the screen, naturally enough, by Paul Verhoeven, the director of Showgirls.
The notorious filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (“Showgirls”) has never been subtle, and even fans who appreciate his penchant for outrageousness will find his nunsploitation biopic, “Benedetta,” overheated.
The vibe of the film most closely recalls his 1985 English language debut, Flesh+Blood , an underrated entry in his filmography before Hollywood made him infamous.
It is amazing that Paul Verhoeven, the only person to both direct Starship Troopers (1997) and pen a scholarly monograph on the historical Jesus, can pull off being a theologian of holy eros and a flagrant nun-fetish guy in the same movie.
The Danish director of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers has never been one for subtlety, but this queer thriller and anti-Catholic screed sets a new high in lowbrow revelry.
A quarter-century after Hollywood exiled Verhoeven for the sins of Showgirls (or more accurately, the disappointing box office of Starship Troopers and Hollow Man), Benedetta marks the latest unlikely but not exactly improbable triumph for the Dutch provocateur.
The veteran Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct“/”Starship Troopers”), a somewhat scholar on the teachings of Christianity, who always wanted to make a film on Jesus, comes the closest here in this campy but shallow film that’s a blend of religious images with masochism.
The director of “Robocop,” “Showgirls,” and “Starship Troopers” has never had much use for subtlety or unspoken yearning, and his unholy adaptation of Judith C. Brown’s history book “Immodest Acts” feels closer in spirit to “The Devils” than “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” even before the film supplements its source material with a dick-less Christ, demonic omens, and a COVID-ready subplot about the efficacy of lockdown measures against the Plague.
The director of RoboCop and Starship Troopers latest film Benedetta recounts a somewhat heightened version of the story of Sister Benedetta who joined the Pescian Convent in the 1600’s.
Even his more traditional blockbusters— Robocop , Total Recall, and Basic Instinct —tend to chip away at their audiences’ certainties between set pieces.
Paul Verhoeven, at least, is a provocateur with pedigree, though I’ve never personally fallen for much beyond Robocop, as even in his best work, his baser instincts tend to leave a sour taste (the rape scene in Showgirls being the preeminent example of a sorry-I-just- can’t crossed line).
Think of the gutter-level video game in the background of Elle, or the detachable-limb Jesus hero of RoboCop, or the competitive barely coded romance at the heart of Showgirls.
Still, that same sharpened perspective and on-point thematic skewering (here, the target is religion spiraling out into the many forms of irrational paranoia and sickening violence it takes on) has been a staple of Paul Verhoeven’s filmography and a reason masterpieces such as Robocop have stood the test of time.
The director of “Robocop,” “Showgirls,” and “Starship Troopers” has never had much use for subtlety or unspoken yearning, and his unholy adaptation of Judith C. Brown’s history book “Immodest Acts” feels closer in spirit to “The Devils” than “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” even before the film supplements its source material with a dick-less Christ, demonic omens, and a COVID-ready subplot about the efficacy of lockdown measures against the Plague.
The director of RoboCop and Starship Troopers latest film Benedetta recounts a somewhat heightened version of the story of Sister Benedetta who joined the Pescian Convent in the 1600’s.
Paul Verhoeven originally adapted the book with his longtime collaborator Gerard Soeteman ( Black Book , Turkish Delight ), but the screenwriter stepped down when it became too “sexualized.”
Since the days of “Turkish Delight,” this has been the subversive essence of Verhoeven’s oeuvre.
Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch veteran of classy camp ( Elle , Basic Instinct ), takes us back to a convent in seventeenth-century Italy and throws everything at the church wall, from sexed-up nuns and crazed snakes to a rampant plague, comets in the sky, religious icons-turned-sex toys, gynaecological torture tools and folk being burned at the stake.
It’s long been known that Paul Verhoeven, the man behind such taboo-breaking movies as Basic Instinct , Showgirls and Elle , has been fascinated by the life of Jesus Christ.
That someone turned out to be Paul Verhoeven, the director/provocateur whose flirtation with the absurd has more than a few times led to a full-on make-out session with camp (this is the man responsible for Basic Instinct and Showgirls ).
Director Paul Verhoeven, the auteur behind Basic Instinct and Showgirls , would have it no other way.
A lesbian-nun flick from the director of Basic Instinct?
The veteran Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct“/”Starship Troopers”), a somewhat scholar on the teachings of Christianity, who always wanted to make a film on Jesus, comes the closest here in this campy but shallow film that’s a blend of religious images with masochism.
Everything is either obvious, vulgar or some smarmy combination of the two in this racy follow-up to Verhoeven’s rape-themed 2016 thriller “Elle.”
Originally titled Blessed Virgin and pegged for release way back in 2019, it marks an ever-welcome return for the great director, his first outing since 2016 when Elle took Isabelle Huppert all the way to the Oscars.
Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch veteran of classy camp ( Elle , Basic Instinct ), takes us back to a convent in seventeenth-century Italy and throws everything at the church wall, from sexed-up nuns and crazed snakes to a rampant plague, comets in the sky, religious icons-turned-sex toys, gynaecological torture tools and folk being burned at the stake.
It’s long been known that Paul Verhoeven, the man behind such taboo-breaking movies as Basic Instinct , Showgirls and Elle , has been fascinated by the life of Jesus Christ.
Think of the gutter-level video game in the background of Elle, or the detachable-limb Jesus hero of RoboCop, or the competitive barely coded romance at the heart of Showgirls.
The director’s second French film following his 2016 comeback Elle , he reunites with scribe David Birke to (liberally) adapt the 1986 historical study Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy.
Paul Verhoeven originally adapted the book with his longtime collaborator Gerard Soeteman ( Black Book , Turkish Delight ), but the screenwriter stepped down when it became too “sexualized.”
Nothing here tops the fabulous amount of feces that Verhoeven dumped on Carice van Houten in 2006′s Black Book – the director’s first post-Hollywood outing – but there is no doubt that Benedetta fulfills the barf-bag whims of the forever uninhibited, filthily uncontrollable filmmaker.
Opening with (what else?) bird shit in the face of a one eyed soldier, Verhoeven doesn’t quite get Black Book (2006) in the fecal arena, but his insistence on depicting the realistic parameters of bodily functions and fluids abounds.
His best film is “Black Book,” about a singer who engaged with the Gestapo for the Dutch Resistance in Nazi occupied Holland.
If anything, this is a bit paradoxical given how traditionalist most of the film’s other formal elements are: visually, this is Verhoeven at his blandest and most conservative, operating in a purposely stodgy Euro-arthouse mode similar to Black Book and Elle, and one that does this already dry content no favors beyond making the supposed point even more overt.
Desde la sátira social de un blockbuster como “Robocop”, hasta producciones más “artísticas” como “Elle” o “Black Book”, el afamado director siempre ha tenido algo que decir sobre una gran variedad de temas, y lo ha hecho de manera explotadora, exagerada y, muchas veces, sin tomarse demasiado en serio a sí mismo.
Bergman’s The Seventh Seal looms large in Verhoeven’s toolbox (composer Anne Dudley even incorporates that film’s ‘Dies Irae’ chant in her score), but we can’t help being reminded too, in scenes set during a plague outbreak, of the ‘bring out your dead!’ clichés of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Bergman’s The Seventh Seal looms large in Verhoeven’s toolbox (composer Anne Dudley even incorporates that film’s ‘Dies Irae’ chant in her score), but we can’t help being reminded too, in scenes set during a plague outbreak, of the ‘bring out your dead!’ clichés of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
It’s the “Blue Is the Warmest Color” problem all over again — not so much the male gaze (DP Jeanne Lapoirie is a woman; she has shot several queer classics, including “Wild Reeds” and “BPM”) as the conceit that two inexperienced female lovers, deprived of role models, would have porn-caliber sex their first time out, changing positions multiple times for the benefit of a steamy montage.
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When Benedetta suddenly sprouts stigmata and is installed as Abbess in her mother’s place, Christina’s hostility flares into an all-out war which culminates in her literal downfall, in a wildly Gothic-garish scene ripped from “Black Narcissus” by way of “Vertigo.”
It’s the “Blue Is the Warmest Color” problem all over again — not so much the male gaze (DP Jeanne Lapoirie is a woman; she has shot several queer classics, including “Wild Reeds” and “BPM”) as the conceit that two inexperienced female lovers, deprived of role models, would have porn-caliber sex their first time out, changing positions multiple times for the benefit of a steamy montage.