Outside early New York screenings of Benedetta, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's adaptation of a real story about an Italian nun who claimed to see visions of Jesus and was imprisoned for having a lesbian relationship with another sister in her convent, approximately seven to 10 protesters have decried the movie's salacious depictions of sexual activity amongst women who have sworn off earthly delights in the name of their religion. It is, in other words, the usual response to these sorts of things. Benedetta, to be clear, has been marketed to titillate (so to speak): The first poster, released ahead of the Cannes Film Festival premiere, featured a nun's half-topless torso. Based on that alone, you can make a few educated guesses about what the tone of this one is going to be, especially if you're familiar with Verhoeven's work (Showgirls, Basic Instinct) and his fascination with the politics of sex. But Benedetta, which is now playing in theaters, is more than a sexy movie about horny nuns.
Benedetta, based on historian Judith C. Brown's 1986 nonfiction book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Renaissance Nun in Renaissance Italy, is the story of Benedetta Carlini (played by Virginie Efira), the daughter of a 17th-century middle-class Italian family who joined a cloister of ascetic nuns in Pescia. While in the convent, learning the political hierarchies among her sisters and the authoritarian abbess (Charlotte Rampling), she meets Sister Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia). They begin a romantic relationship, first merely flirting and then making bolder advances at each other across the thin sheet of fabric separating their beds. Obviously, this sort of thing is frowned upon in Renaissance-era Catholicism, and when Benedetta is suspected of faking her now-famous religious ecstasies, others in the convent will do anything they can to bring her down.
While the events of the movie are fashioned to fit Verhoeven's irreverent model of a historical drama, with occasional moments of acidic humor that made me scream with laughter, most of what happens in the movie (Virgin Mary dildo notwithstanding) is, according to the historical record, true. Benedetta existed, she took religious vows and entered a convent, she became a mystic who claimed a connection to the divine, and she was tried by the church and imprisoned because of her relationship with a woman—the same woman who ended up confessing everything they did to her inquisitors. What's fun about Verhoeven's movie is how Benedetta herself is presented: not as a lovestruck cartoon caught between lust and religion, or as a pornographic parody of a real person, but as an extremely intelligent schemer who expertly influences everyone around her to gain her own ends.
The genius of the film is that it's purposely unclear whether Benedetta's visions are real or fake. Benedetta is, in many ways, a power-hungry narcissist somewhat overwhelmed by her own influence, but some of the best scenes (at least the ones that don't include Rampling vamping around as the monomaniacal abbess) are Benedetta's visions of Hot Rugged Jesus galloping on horseback to save her from thugs or striding across a wheat field to propose marriage. Religious doctrine being used to manipulate large swaths of people is nothing new or groundbreaking, but in Benedetta it is presented as sly politicking among a marginalized group of women whose only connection to society comes in the form of miracles, spectacle, and the social diplomacy they create within the tense confines of their living space, a crucible whose intense pressure is in the interplay between the forbidden and the divine.
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December 04, 2021 at 06:17AM
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