You can get whiplash from tonal turns like that, but that\u2019s nothing new for Verhoeven, who\u2019s all but made a career out of making his audiences (and no small number of his critics) question how much of what he\u2019s up to is a joke. Sometimes, those delineations are clear; when the little girl (and title character) arrives at the convent, there is a bit of haggling with the Mother Sister (Charlotte Rampling) over the \u201cdowry\u201d her father is offering. (This is the beginning of a runner \u2013 Verhoeven and David Birke\u2019s screenplay mines considerable humor out of the great financial necessities of the church, and the influence of those necessities on its decision-making.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eighteen years later, Benedetta (played as an adult by Virginie Efira, who also co-starred in Verhoeven\u2019s Elle<\/em>) is a shining light of the convent \u2013 so much so that she occasionally has visions of Jesus himself. Enter Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia), a young woman abused by her father who is taken in by the convent. There is an immediate chemistry and curiosity between Benedetta and Bartolomea, which the former does her best to deny, and even repel. It\u2019s in this thick brew of repression that her visions (and nightmares) become clearer, and the attraction becomes undeniable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Verhoeven loves to have it both ways \u2013 he takes what\u2019s happening between these two women seriously, but he also can\u2019t resist having a giggle at the prurient elements. Some of that is deliberately nuanced; their interactions are playful, and it\u2019s helpful to remember that in the full realm of sexuality, silliness is not only allowed but advisable. But he\u2019s also using sexual attraction to (as the Twitter scolds insist no one does) further the story. It takes a lifetime of making movies that deal, in different ways, with eroticism, to learn how to build up to a sex scene the way he does here. It\u2019s a barnburner \u2013 and one where the inevitable gasps of \u201cMy God\u201d pack an extra punch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That material is provocative, and Verhoeven clearly sees himself as a provocateur. When he stages a sequence where Jesus, on white horseback, saves Benedetta from a rape and then turns into a rapist himself, the director knows he\u2019s playing with dynamite, toying with the most loaded of symbols and ideas, seen as both divine and dirty (and that\u2019s before he even gets to the Virgin Mary dildo), and seeing the rituals of the religion through a psycho-sexual lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Benedetta<\/em> is ultimately about her visions \u2013 and their legitimacy. If Christ has shown himself to her, and passed his stigmata to her, then she would be a saint, which would obviously prove advantageous to both her and her convent. So are these visions genuine? Or merely manifestations of her newfound desire? Or both? Could a spiritual awakening also be a sexual awakening? \u201cI don\u2019t know how God makes things happen,\u201d Benedetta explains. \u201cBut his will is done through me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are, to put it mildly, more serious questions of faith than we might expect from a heaving-bosom Sapphic melodrama. But Vehoeven and Birke\u2019s script, loosely based on Judith Brown\u2019s book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy<\/em>, poses plenty of them, while keeping the pace lively and finding the right mixture of contemporary vernacular and period language in the dialogue; the phrase \u201cbring her to crisis\u201d is a particularly nice touch. (And though the film was shot in 2018, there are some awfully uncomfortable allusions in its plague plotline.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rampling provides something akin to comic relief, in her wary characterization and bone-dry line deliveries; even in her first scene, a mere reaction shot gets as big a laugh as her dialogue, and her dialogue is razor sharp (\u201cI never wanted her to die\u2026 not so quickly, at least\u201d). But there\u2019s also a deep sense of melancholy to the character \u2013 of religion, she muses, \u201cIt may be vain and hopeless, but I\u2019ve devoted my life to it\u201d \u2013 and she has one moment of raw, visceral horror and pain that really stings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Benedetta is obviously the trickiest role, and Efira is well suited to it; this is masterful performance, capturing the character\u2019s complicated arc, from tentativeness to confidence to invincibility. Newcomer Patakia, as Bartolomea, has the less showy part to play, but she acquits herself nicely; she seems to understand that her journey is the mirror image of Bendetta\u2019s, and that they are merely passing and intersecting on their way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The deeper Benedetta <\/em>goes, the slipperier it gets, and by the time Verhoeven arrives at its conclusion, there\u2019s nothing he can do but go for it, ending the picture in the only logical fashion: outright mayhem. Do all the pieces fit together? Absolutely not. But it\u2019s a movie that only this filmmaker could have made, at this point in his career, and we\u2019re all luckier for that. “<\/em>Benedetta<\/em>” is out Friday in theaters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/benedetta2-1024x753.jpg\")
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