Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021)

 

It’s not hard to see why Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta was viewed in some quarters as blasphemous or insensitive or offensive; the director’s lusty approach to religious-themed material all but invites those judgments. But by the same token, its vividness and brashness, its embrace of the shocking and scandalous, gives it the feeling of playing for high stakes: in depicting a devout believer who nevertheless embraces transgression (particularly in matters of sexual pleasure), then it posits faith as something full and complex and, for all its deprivations, scintillating (in this respect at least, Bunuel sometimes comes to mind in watching the film). Set in the 17^th century, the film starts with Benedetta’s childhood admission to the convent: as a young adult, evidence of her potential saintliness accumulates, and she’s eventually named Mother Superior; one of the film’s delicious ambiguities is that while the Mother she displaces (Charlotte Rampling) is more correct in her behaviour and her devotion to the institution’s well-being, Benedetta (despite her highly reciprocated sexual desire for a novice nun) is the truer believer and more likely instrument of God’s will. The film is as propulsive and gripping as any of Verhoeven’s high-voltage Hollywood works, with action scenes of comparable impact (several of them built around visions of a very dynamic Jesus); the lead actress Virginie Efira is extraordinarily and fully present, not least in the very frank love-making scenes. The film’s intense physicality manifests itself in multiple ways: the deep-rooted fascination of stigmata (amplified here by unanswered questions about whether Benedetta’s bleeding wounds are self-inflicted, and even if they are, does that inherently reduce their God-given significance), a focus on bodily orifices and excretions, on the details of sexual pleasure, on the can’t-look-away horrors of the plague that threatens the surrounding country, all contributing to a startling overall viewing experience.