Verhoeven Watch: Benedetta (2021)

Watched:  04/01/2021

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Paul Verhoeven

In the wake of Showgirls, I was curious about what Verhoeven is up to these days.  I knew he'd more or less self-exiled to Europe.  For a director I like, I really hadn't seen his post-90's stuff, so when Justin alerted me Verhoeven had put something out last year, I gave it a whirl.

This is, as we used to say, a Stefon movie.

It's a hell of a thing to watch right on the heels of Showgirls, as this is a movie about nuns, faith, politics and religion, plagues, religious fervor, power dynamics, relativism in truth and morality, and - because it's Paul Verhoeven - eroticism and sexy nuns.  It's also loosely based on real events, changed enough it's not historical fiction in most ways, but... yeah.  Some of this is documented.  

Benedetta (Virginie Efira) was sent to the convent as a youth, showing signs she could speak directly to Jesus.  Immediately signs of minor miracles surround her, including a statue of Mary falling on top of her, but balanced just right to protect her.  She's lived a life of near bliss within the convent as a bit of an oddball who sees visions (wonderfully directed with Jesus as a sort of action hero/ knight protecting his "wife", Benedetta).  

A young woman, Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) seeks refuge at the convent at the same time Benedetta's wealthy parents are visiting and Benedetta talks her father into sponsoring her to stay and become a novice.  

Things gradually take a turn to the erotic between the pair, as Benedetta's visions become more intense, she seems to speak in the voice of Christ, and finally shows signs of stigmata.  This launches a rise in her station at the abbey while the former abbess (Charlotte Rampling, y'all!) seeks an investigation into the truth of Benedetta's visions (kind of, I'm grossly oversimplifying and leaving things out).

The movie rides a fine line of refusing to state whether Benedetta is playing a role or insane or is in fact touched by Christ.  Perhaps all three.  And it works.  Verhoeven's approach to religion here is a "you know, who knows?" that keeps the film from feeling like a pedantic college-aged atheist thinking their blowing your mind, and instead investigates possibilities through the focal point of the titular character who genuinely believes she has never sinned, even as (spoiler) she's using a re-purposed statue as a sex toy with her roomie (end spoiler).

In the inevitable dissertations on Verhoeven's work, the eroticism of the male gaze on female-on-female sexuality will see no small amount of ink spilt, and that's certainly here.  But so, too, will the odd similarities you can find in Verhoeven's interrogation of power structures - whether it's nude reviews in Vegas or renaissance-era convents - and how those structures impact remarkable or very weird women from both the patriarchal stance and the women who could be allies instead enabling and flexing that power.  There's absolutely a 1-to-1 formula for how you could say "wait, is this movie the same as Showgirls?" that I found mind-boggling, but it also doesn't necessarily hold.  Your mileage may vary.

I do think:  this is a very good film.  It sure as hell isn't what the Academy is looking for, although Verhoeven has produced Oscar winners in his European exile.  I'm just not sure this is the thing the Academy is ever going to champion.  

Is it smut?  Maybe.  Maybe?  Probably for a lot of people.  Like Showgirls, I don't know if I found some of the sex sexy, as that wasn't the point of the scene.  But I also get the gist of why Verhoeven quit working in the U.S.