Benedetta

Somehow I feel that since Paul Verhoeven turned eighty, he now has no need to please anyone, and so he just went and made a completely self-indulgent new movie. I think that the end result is a total nunsploitation B-movie rather than an A-grade art movie. The director once again shows off his great ability to be provocative and his black sense of humor. I am still a huge fan and therefore probably going to watch anything he makes, however, I know that Benedetta is definitely not going to be a movie for everyone. [KVIFF 2021] (2021-08-28)

A harrowing two hours. Basic Instinct was also bold, unpredictable and full of eroticism, but it was made by a filmmaker at the peak of his powers, not an old man who obviously has a head full of shit even in his 80s and is trying his best to translate it to the screen in the most controversial style possible, but unfortunately that's about it. (2021-12-17)

Benedetta has spent most of her life in a convent, but now besides God, she started to love Bartolomea... what initially appears as a drama about forbidden love, in Paul Verhoeven's direction turns into a provocative and unpredictable story that opens up a lot of interesting topics and cleverly manipulates with the audience, their expectations, and the way it processes what happens to the protagonists on the screen. Equally daring, cynical, clever, and entertaining as the director's greatest classics. (2021-11-22)

Set in a 17th-century Italian convent against the backdrop of a plague epidemic, this erotic film about nuns is a rather uneven attempt to raise its B-movie foundation, drawing primarily on the tradition of Italian exploitation flicks with nuns (so-called “nunsploitation”), to the level of a top-tier festival film. Paul Verhoeven threw into it his trademarks and favorite obsessions including, for example, caustic irony, sadism and perversion, and feminism, in this case spiced up with a mocking critique of the Church as a hypocritical institution controlled by power interests and standing in the way of sexual freedom. We follow the story of a young nun, who is experiencing very vivid visions of manifestations of Christ and undergoing a lesbian awakening with a newly arrived novice, from her childhood in a series of sacrilegious escapades, whose true origins are shrouded in mystery (perhaps a divine miracle, maybe just an act with a profit-seeking objective) and are the driving force of the entire film. Through most of its runtime, the film veers between a low-brow black-humor farce about the abuse of believers’ gullibility (with flatulence, defecation, playful pornographic motifs and the figure of Jesus Christ in the role of protector, who fearlessly decapitates enemies and beasts) and an agonizing serious drama with classical music and naturalistic violence, dealing with a delirious woman prone to self-harm and the negative impacts of fanatical faith. The clash of these two tonally contradictory approaches is quite problematic and unsatisfying, but perhaps that doesn’t matter to Verhoeven, as he probably just wanted to have a good romp and be a bit provocative and outrageous, which he succeeded in doing. Because of that, Benedetta falls into the category of borderline guilty-pleasure entertainment suitable for midnight festival screenings that will divide audiences, and in which the acting highlight is not the performances of the actresses portraying the lesbian couple, but that of Charlotte Rampling in the supporting (though essential and noteworthy) role of the sceptical mother superior. (2021-09-03)

A film about an Italian nun filmed by the French directed by a Dutchman — now that's quite the pedigree :-) While this movie doesn't quite reach the heights of my favorite director's best works, mainly due to its somewhat lacking narrative, it still has its merits. Towards the end, Paul Verhoeven may have gone a tad overboard, resulting in a finale with gripping action but a loss of historical credibility. One undeniable positive, though, is the director's skillful portrayal of the beauty of the female form — Virginia Efira could serve as a model for sculptures and many younger women might secretly envy her. However, this wasn't exactly an erotic thriller, so it did feel a bit drawn out for me at times. Initially, I was leaning towards a solid three-star rating, but the film's spotlight on the hypocrisy within the Catholic Church nudges it up to a weaker four. (2022-06-07)