Benedetta
Starring Virginie Efira ,Charlotte Rampling ,Daphne Patakia as Bartolomea
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Rating: *
What is wrong with Paul Verhoeven who once upon a time made clenched actioners like RoboCop and Total Recall. Then he discovered the pleasures of forbidden s*x in Basic Instinct and the disastrous Showgirls. His last film Elle in 2016 had Isabelle Hupert actually enjoying rape.
I thought the virulent voyeurism of Verhoeven couldn’t get worse. In Benedetta he proves me wrong. Set in the 17th century—so no vibrators and other stimulants—the deeply offensive film is one long marathon of naked breasts and simulated vaginas set in a Catholic convent where the nuns seem to be hornier than s*x workers in a brothel. They rub each other and themselves. They even get turned on defecating together.
There is a sequence where we actually see the two heroines Benedetta(Virginie Efira) and Bartolomea(Daphne Patakia) shitting together.Benedetta even offers her new friend some dry grass after the act. It’s all supposed to be extremely erotic. But comes across as acutely idiotic, with the nuns flashing their breasts out of habit(pun intended).
The loose film is based loosely on the 1986 novel Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by Judith Brown and purports to package the acts of rebellion in an oppressive convent where sexual frustration runs rampant.
So does the director’s imagination ,which is borderline prurient. The nudity and lovemaking are intended to be casually seductive, Instead they are offensively violent and misrepresented. The nudity is downright gratuitous, with the nuns slipping out of their habits with the expertise of women who do such things for financial rather than emotional satisfaction.
The two young actresses do well for themselves whenever the script allows them to get out bed. The last 20 minutes of the perverse proceedings when the politics of religion faces a vaginal protest are specially mortifying and forged. The violence on the streets as the evil cleric (Lambert Wilson) is mob-lynched is so hellishly gratuitous it makes you wonder why Verhoeven is still directing films at 83.
Is he still in search of that sliver of salvation that is secreted between the legs.
