Paul Verhoeven is a satiric provocateur who genuinely believes in—and is drawn to—the power and passion of sex. Benedetta is thus an ideal vehicle for the Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Elle director, recounting the inspired-by-real-events ordeal of a 17th century nun who thought herself the bride of Christ and expressed her divine love through a lesbian affair. Pain, piety, sin, and desire all collide in this hot-to-trot import (in theaters now), which critiques the church and its notions of legitimate holiness via a tale that’s as playfully blasphemous as it is erotic—both of which are epitomized by the unforgettable sight of a handheld Virgin Mary wood carving fashioned into a sex toy.
A tempestuous balance between the sacred and the profane is struck by Benedetta, which opens with young Benedetta (Elena Plonka) being transported by her wealthy parents to a convent in Pescia, a small village in the Tuscany region of Italy. Along their journey, they stop to pray to the Virgin Mary and are accosted by a group of soldiers who mock their devotion and attempt to steal a medallion from the girl’s mother. Benedetta warns them that the rustling wind is proof that Mary intends to punish them for their affront and, though they scoff at this idea, they’re proven wrong when one of them receives bird shit in the eye. Benedetta’s saintliness is thereby confirmed from the outset, depicted by Verhoeven with the sort of impish humor that defines his ensuing tale, in which Benedetta is welcomed into the convent and discovers that she’s destined for divine things.
If Benedetta speaks directly to God, her new home’s abbess (Charlotte Rampling) is primarily concerned with running and maintaining her own position at the convent. That she’s introduced haggling with Benedetta’s father over the dowry price he’ll pay to have his daughter admitted marks her as a greedy woman consumed by matters more material (and personal) than heavenly. As embodied by Rampling, the abbess is a stern and shrewd ruler who hews to the church playbook to a tee. Benedetta, however, is anything but conventional, as illustrated by her first night at the convent, during which she stops to pray to a giant statue of the Virgin Mary only to have the figure literally fall on top of her, perched prostrate as if it were a lover, its naked breast exposed—at which the adolescent Benedetta instinctively suckles. Unlike Sister Jacopa (Guilaine Londez), who wishes that her entire body was as wooden as her fake finger (and carved with the name of God), Benedetta’s devotion isn’t cold and dead “like a gravestone” but, rather, flesh-and-blood hot.
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Eighteen years later, Benedetta (Virginie Efira) hasn’t cooled off. On stage, she speaks about coveting Jesus’ “bodily presence” and then has a vision in which she runs to Christ as he tends to his flock of sheep. The plague may be ravaging Italy, yet Benedetta’s sole interest is betrothing herself to the Lord. She finds a perfect vehicle to create a sultry holy union when Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) bursts into the convent while fleeing her abusive and incestuous father, and—after the abbess convinces Benedetta’s father to pay for this unfortunate soul to stay—becomes Benedetta’s ally and friend. Their bond is strengthened by various flirtatious and sacrilegious incidents, including Benedetta taking Bartolomea to the commode (where she delightedly poops and farts), and Bartolomea sneaking a naughty peek at Benedetta’s nude body around (and through) the transparent sheet that separates their beds. At the same time that the couple’s temperature rises, Benedetta also draws closer to Christ, climaxing with a vision of him on the cross that leaves her with incessantly bleeding stigmata wounds.
Those gushing injuries are, like virtually everything else in Benedetta, highly sexualized by Verhoeven, whose giddy direction casts this affair in the vein of other lascivious nunsploitation films like Flavia, the Heretic, Dark Waters and Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Conflict soon arises when the abbess’ daughter Christina (Louise Chevillotte) comes to suspect that Benedetta has faked her crown-of-thorns stigmata cuts and, upon hearing that Benedetta will replace her mother as the convent’s new abbess, lies in an attempt to out Benedetta as a fraud. This ruse leads to a calamity that recalls a similar incident from the doggedly Satanic The Omen, and it also spurs the intervention of Florence’s Nuncio (Lambert Wilson), who visits Pescia with the intention of unmasking Benedetta as an ungodly imposter fit for the stake. What follows is even more overzealous hysteria, with Verhoeven mixing bawdiness, titillation, and tragedy to campy effect, his every scene rife with true-believers behaving in ways corrupt and debauched (even the Nuncio’s wife has to show off her milking breasts to the abbess)—save, that is, for Benedetta, who remains convinced of her own divinity even during bedroom romps with Bartolomea and her homemade dildo.
Agony and ecstasy embrace throughout Benedetta, with Benedetta taught that suffering is the surest path to Christ, and overcome with agonized delight by His loving kisses. Verhoeven isn’t subtle about anything, as evidenced by Benedetta’s visions of Christ saving her from harm by using his sword to slice hissing snakes and decapitate would-be rapists. Immodesty is the entire point of this amusing endeavor and Verhoeven’s spirited stewardship is matched by the performance of Efira, which radiates pulse-pounding intensity of both a pious and sensual nature. Efira never winks at the audience but her turn is nonetheless so fervently fiery that it elicits more than a few chuckles, especially once things spiral out of control and Benedetta is forced to contend with the possibility that she may burn for her alleged heresy.
Orgasms compel women to exclaim, “Sweet Jesus!” while religious officials decry lesbian love as “impossible” in Benedetta, which celebrates sex as righteous and damns the church for its blind, self-interested cruelty, the latter epitomized by an “I am Pagliacci”-style bit in which the Nuncio tells a plague-stricken man to seek absolution from his parish priest, only to hear that this man is the parish priest. There’s much to laugh about in Verhoeven’s latest, although perhaps most amusing of all is the fact that his portrait of Benedetta’s carnal communion is, ultimately, as sincere as it is overheated.
