I’m glad Paul Verhoeven left the US to make more movies in Europe. Verhoeven’s grandiose over the top style, in particular when it comes to sex, really doesn’t work with the overly chaste American moviemaking industry. Benedetta made in the US would have been obsessed with implying a lot of “impure” acts were happening in the Catholic Church in the middle ages. But in France? Verhoeven really gets creative in creating a world of a more sex positive Catholic upbringing, making the movie super duper insanely fun while delivering a solid critique of the institution of Catholicism.
Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira) was a real nun in a Tuscan convent in the 1600s, when the Black Plague has started to ravage Europe. Drawn to the power of Jesus and the Virgin Mary since her childhood, Benedetta grows in the love of Jesus throughout her stay in the convent. Things take a turn when Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) storms into the convent begging for solace from her horrible home life. Moved by her story, Benedetta takes Bartolomea in helps her grow in love and the Church. At the same time, Benedetta starts having visions of Jesus loving her in every way possible, which is met with both exclamation and skepticism, skepticism specifically from the convent’s Abbess (Charlotte Rampling).
As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Verhoeven is pretty clear on this point: basically the thesis for his movie. Benedetta is a threat to the Catholic Church hierarchy of power: all the way up. Every person in a position of power sees her as a vessel towards their own personal ends, a pretty glaring damnation of the religious institution. Benedetta’s sexually religious awakening built upon love and empathy and what she perceives to be a real connection with Christ is countered in every way with skepticism or creepy perversion from those hoping to maintain power or profit from it. Even Benedetta herself is tempted by this power and called on her obsession with self-importance/pleasure a few times. The minute the institution becomes more important than the people its supposed to be serving, there’s Paul Verhoeven, reminding everyone about the slippery slope of human created power does to dehumanize and dereligify the supposedly pious ideals of the Catholic Church.
But Verhoeven also knows that people are going to see the “lesbian nuns” film. Sex sells, y’all. Yikes, will the Catholic Church double hate this movie at all the eroticism thrown at religious artifacts and beliefs here. This is where the over the top insanity of Verhoeven’s filmmaking really makes Benedetta, um, pop I guess. The “unholy” use of a Virgin Mary statue, religious epiphanies of Jesus saving his “bride” to be Benedetta in very un-Jesus like ways, and the erotic translation of “love” really will make you blush and giggle repeatedly at the sheer audacity of Verhoeven’s sex positive portrayal of Benedetta juxtaposed with the Catholic Church priests. Plus, when Benedetta’s methods are questioned, Verhoeven turns the movie into a Reformation era Lewinsky scandal, with all the men prodding these women for details and more while they watch, enamored but also cruel in their view of her lifestyle choices.
Stay in Europe, Paul Verhoeven. At this point, you’re my go to erotic thriller moviemaker. If you keep making films like Elle and Benedetta, I’m excited to see where else you can take the erotic thriller genre. Gay conversion therapy hookups? A sweet BDSM romance? Retirement home orgy? Who the hell knows, but if Verhoeven’s behind the camera, sign me up.