Benedetta is a movie about horny lesbian nuns, co-written and directed by no less an erotic thriller auteur than Paul freaking Verhoeven himself (adapted from the non-fiction book “Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy” by Judith C. Brown). I was kicking myself when this came through my local arthouses and I couldn’t get around to it, but now I see that it’s available to stream on Hulu. Let’s fucking go!
Virginie Efira plays the eponymous Benedetta, a girl borne of a wealthy family and raised to be a nun. Indeed, the opening minutes show Benedetta at the center of such highly unusual — one might even say “miraculous” — events that she may actually be under the direct protection of the Virgin Mary herself. Even better, certain dream sequences show us that Benedetta believes herself to be the actual, literal, monogamous wife of the lord Jesus Christ (here played by Jonathan Couzinie).
Things pick up further with the arrival of Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia), a peasant girl who runs screaming to the convent for sanctuary from her abusive father. Benedetta takes pity on the poor stranger and pulls some strings to arrange for Bartolomea to stay in the convent as a nun. Benedetta and Bartolomea strike up a forbidden romance and we’re off to the races.
Yes, the film is undeniably a glorified entry in the trashy “nunsploitation” subgenre so popular back in the ’70s (“Immodest Acts” was published in 1987, by the way.), and thus blasphemy is the order of the day. But this is Paul Verhoeven we’re talking about. With the tragically misguided exception of Showgirls, anytime Verhoeven loads his films with to the brim with violence and/or sex, you can be certain there’s something far more daring and intelligent going on under the surface. There’s also the fact that Verhoeven is in his 80s by this point, far too old to have any fucks left to give.
As the plot unfolds, Benedetta’s self-insert Mary Sue fantasies of Jesus get increasingly graphic and dangerously palpable, to the point where they apparently result in real-life injuries resembling the stigmata. Shortly afterwards, Benedetta gets to speaking in tongues about how she’s the only thing keeping the town safe from plague. And remember, these revelatory fever dreams and night terrors began when Bartolomea arrived, and Benedetta’s own sapphic desires may inexplicably be driving them on.
So. Is Benedetta a delusional nutjob? Is she the subject of some terrible mental illness unknown to 17th century science? Is she acting out of repressed shame for her taboo sexuality? Or is she really a bona fide saint like she claims she is?
Of course everyone in the film has an opinion on the subject, but that’s beside the point. The point is that we have a charismatic and beautiful woman with a halfway plausible claim to sainthood, enough to convince the unwashed masses that Benedetta is not only a direct conduit to God but also their most reliable protector against the plague. That carries wealth and power, which is in turn enough for the higher-ups at the church to take an interest in promoting Benedetta.
Until Benedetta finally pisses off the wrong people and proves herself to be more trouble than she’s worth. This inevitably leads to the witch hunt that is the third act, because how else was this movie going to end? But it’s important to note at every step of the third act that all the trials and torturing and bureaucracy is simply a means of reasserting dominance. In fact, at every point in the movie from start to finish, it’s like those in authority are only using religion and superstition as a means of lining their own pockets and dominating others while trying not to say the quiet part out loud.
When the chips are down, literally everyone in this movie shows that they will quickly desert their own beliefs for the sake of their own self-interest. The sole noteworthy exception is Benedetta herself, who seems to genuinely believe her own bullshit. Or maybe she’s just better at playing the game than everyone else.
(Side note: A title card at the end helpfully informs us that Benedetta was denied martyrdom, thus sainthood for her was off the table, likely because of ecumenical politics. I might add that she lived to be 70 years old, at a time when the average life expectancy was 40 years. Well done indeed.)
If all you’re looking for is some sapphic erotica, be assured that Efira and Patakia spend a significant chunk of the screentime dancing between all four bases. But more than all the nudity and groping and grinding, every single sexual act in this film is underlined with the transgressive aphrodisiac thrill of breaking the rules and getting away with it. On one level, the two of them are literally engaging in taboo acts of carnal pleasure that could result in ultimate social dishonor or worse. On another level, they introduce a certain hand-whittled sex toy at the 70-minute mark, the mere creation of which is such a profoundly impressive level of sacrilege that I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw up.
The performances are impressive all around. It certainly helps that the dynamite pairing of Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia is surrounded by such capable supporting talents as Lambert Wilson and Charlotte Rampling. But what’s fascinating about the performances here is in how everyone is taking this overtly smutty and frankly outlandish treatment of a true story, and they somehow get away with playing it completely straight. It helps to remind the audience that for all the perverted thrills of watching a story about beautiful nuns in an explicitly sexual relationship, there’s still at least one woman’s life on the line, a podunk town at risk of getting annihilated by bubonic plague, and a woman who may or may not be an actual saint.
As if to hammer the point home even further, everyone in this picture acts in a closely guarded way. There are so many subtleties in every performance, such that everyone looks as if they’re keeping a secret and struggling with the question of whether and how to let the secret out. In many cases, it’s like the characters are actively trying to deceive themselves into believing something or forgetting something. It helps to make the characters deeper, the themes more compelling, and the performances that much more impressive.
With Benedetta, the word I keep coming back to is “subversive”. Each passing moment brought another peculiar feeling that Verhoeven and crew were somehow getting away with something. It’s certainly impressive enough that Verhoeven made a trashy nunsploitation film in freaking 2021, and made it with enough production value to hold its own as a legitimate arthouse picture. But a lot of that arthouse cred comes from everything going on under the surface.
Yes, the film does everything it says it’s going to do. It delivers a film about beautiful horny women having forbidden sex. And it uses the topic to make all the predictable statements about religious hypocrisy and homophobia, about how Christ’s message of universal love and acceptance means that any sexuality across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum should be perfectly fine, how women are made to suffer under the rule of egocentric rich white men, and so on. But at the same time, the film raises thorny questions about who determines rule of law and who dictates the Word of God. The film makes a compelling argument that religion is every bit as corruptible, every bit as subject to the greed and pride of squabbling humans as any government, and makes that argument with statements as sharp and subtle as a knife to the liver.
Benedetta demands to be seen. It’s a film very specifically designed to be provocative, in every sense of the word. It’s daring and transgressive in a defiantly unique way, such that it’s hard to believe so many people had the unmitigated gall to make this picture and there’s no telling when (or if) we’ll get anything like it again. There’s simply no substitute for seeing the film firsthand.