Total Recall of the Convent
A look inside Paul Verhoeven’s controversial fi lm
BY STEVE ERICKSON
The American opening of
Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta”
has been trailed
by controversy. A Catholic
group showed up to its New York
Film Festival premiere last September
to protest it. Even before
then, the Atlantic ran an interview
with the priest James Martin, who
expressed his outrage over the
scene where two nuns fi nd an exciting
and pleasurable new use for
a Virgin Mary statue. That scene’s
notoriety threatens to overshadow
the fi lm.
Nunsploitation has existed as
a sub-genre for at least 50 years.
Compared to the most outrageous
‘70s examples, “Benedetta” is actually
quite tame, determined to
show its good intentions. Kristin
Kobes du Mez’s book “Jesus and
John Wayne” outlines the relationship
between evangelical Christianity
and conservative American
pop culture. She suggests that Mel
Gibson has taken over from Wayne
as right-wing Christians’ favorite
actor and director. The fact that
anyone would be cool with Gibson’s
brutal wallow in torture with
“The Passion of the Christ,” which
ignores Jesus’ teachings to reduce
him to a piece of bleeding meat,
but furious at this far less violent
fi lm for its sympathetic depiction
of sexually active lesbians exposes
their hypocrisy.
The real biography of Benedetta
Carlini (Virginie Efi ra) matched the
outline, if not all the details, of her
fi ctionalized version’s story. First
seen as a child, she came from a
well-to-do Italian family. “Benedetta”
picks up with her as a young
nun. While men are seen as sources
of violence, the all-female environment
of the convent is no paradise.
“Bendetta” opens on December 4 at the IFC Center.
Its inner politics hint at the
backstabbing of “Showgirls.” Italy
is in danger from bubonic plague.
Benedetta performs apparent miracles
and has an unusually vivid
inner life, but she also falls in love
with Bartolomea (Daphné Patakia),
who ends up betraying her to the
church’s male leaders (embodied
at their most villainous by out bi
French actor Lambert Wilson).
Film critic Adam Nayman,
whose monograph on “Showgirls”
has helped enhance that fi lm maudit’s
reputation, wrote that Verhoeven’s
American fi lms gave him a
coherent identity he never found
working in his native Netherlands.
“Robocop,” “Total Recall,” and “Basic
Instinct” succeeded in playing
it both ways, satirizing Americans’
appetite for sex and violence while
catering to it. With “Showgirls,”
that connection to a mass audience
started slipping. He returned
to the Netherlands after the 2000
“Hollow Man,” but the freedom
to ignore the MPA’s ratings constraints
hasn’t turned into an ability
to make as many fi lms as he’d
like. “Benedetta” is only his third
feature since he came back to Europe.
LAURA RADFORD
Verhoeven’s model seems to be
Ken Russell’s 1971 “The Devils,”
which scandalized Warner Brothers
so much they still refuse to release
its uncut version in the US.
But “Benedetta” may be too polished
for its own good. On the surface,
it’s gritty and earthy. (In an
interview in Cineaste magazine’s
winter issue, Verhoeven points to
scatological imagery in Rembrandt
and Bosch paintings as examples
of Dutch art’s grit.) In its fi rst
few moments, a bird defecates on
someone’s face and a man lights
his farts on fi re. Women wipe their
asses with rough straw after using
the latrine. But the stars are
thin and pretty in a way that looks
more 2021 than 1621. Despite
the period’s lack of electricity, the
fi lm is carefully lit so that the actors’
faces remain visible. (In that
same issue of Cineaste, J.E. Smyth
points to the infl uence of painter
Artemisia Gentileschi.) However,
given Verhoeven’s long stretch in
Hollywood, it’s not surprising that
“Benedetta” looks so slick. His 2006
“Black Book” shares the Indiana
Jones fi lms’ kinetic excitement but
FILM REVIEW
uses it to depict moral grey areas
and historical compromise during
World War II.
“Benedetta” refers to several
Hollywood classics. The Mother
Superior’s staring at nude women
through a peephole suggests Norman
Bates’ behavior in “Psycho.”
Benedetta’s switch to a deep, more
masculine-sounding voice when
supposedly possessed by the spirit
of Jesus hints towards “The Exorcist.”
But it attempts to do something
far more subversive around
gender and sexuality. The limits
of this endeavor are suggested by
the softcore grappling of the fi lm’s
one major sex scene. “Benedetta” is
obviously a fi lm made by a horny
straight guy. But that doesn’t mean
he lacks empathy for the dilemma
of his lesbian characters.
Benedetta sees no contradiction
between sexual and spiritual rapture.
To her, using a Virgin Mary
statue as a sex toy is far from blasphemy.
(A later scene in which she’s
tortured by a man with a phallic
device reverses the earlier consensual
pleasure she experiences.)
She also frequently slips between
fantasy and reality, dreaming and
hallucinating the presence of Jesus
(shown as Western media’s same
old hunky, white hippie). Surprisingly,
“Benedetta” takes her will to
live her life according to her religious
desires, even when they confl
ict with a contemporary idea of a
happy ending, very respectfully. In
its 17th-century Italy, sex, religion,
and politics are inseparable, despite
the amount of damage this does to
its characters’ lives. In the world
where “Benedetta” is being released,
how much has really changed?
BENDETTA | Directed by Paul
Verhoeven | In French with English
subtitles | IFC Films | Opens Dec.
4th at the IFC Center
➤ FIRED TEACHER, from p.8
preside over what promises to be a
contentious courtroom battle.
This ruling is not an ultimate
victory for Payne-Elliott, since the
Archdiocese is likely to fi ght every
step of the way to block discovery,
and will urge the Indiana courts
to uphold its claim of total autonomy
on all “internal church matters.”
But Payne-Elliott can argue
that this is not, strictly speaking,
a purely “internal church matter,”
since the Archdiocese does not
own and operate Cathedral High
School, and its action of threatening
the high school is going outside
the church to interfere with a
contract to which the Archdiocese
is not a party. Expect the Indiana
Supreme Court to see this case
again, and maybe eventually the
US Supreme Court.
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