Nuns get hot under the collar in the Benedetta… | Little White Lies

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Nuns get hot under the col­lar in the Benedet­ta trailer

05 May 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Two women, one with dark hair comforting another with blonde hair, in a dimly lit room with candles.
Two women, one with dark hair comforting another with blonde hair, in a dimly lit room with candles.
Vir­ginie Efi­ra, Lam­bert Wil­son and Char­lotte Ram­pling lead Paul Verhoeven’s Cannes-bound drama.

The Nether­lands’ pre­em­i­nent light­ning rod Paul Ver­ho­even has passed through Hol­ly­wood and the inter­na­tion­al art­house, from the stage at the Razz­ies to the accepter’s podi­um at the César Awards, and none of it has done a sin­gle blessed thing to dull his provocateur’s edge.

His last film, the much-fet­ed erot­ic thriller Elle, dared to won­der whether or not a bru­tal home inva­sion and rape might have aroused some­thing in its sur­vivor, and now he’s bring­ing his off-kil­ter view of sex­u­al­i­ty and its naughty, knot­ty pol­i­tics to the world of orga­nized religion.

His long-await­ed new fea­ture Benedet­ta has final­ly got­ten a trail­er in advance of its world pre­mière sched­uled for the Cannes Film Festival’s slight­ly delayed iter­a­tion in July. Nuns have nev­er been so hot, both in the for­bid­den pas­sions” sense and the that Hansel, he’s so hot right now” sense.

The film orig­i­nal­ly titled Blessed Vir­gin fol­lows the spir­i­tu­al jour­ney of one young woman (Vir­ginie Efi­ra) at a 17th-cen­tu­ry Ital­ian con­vent, where appar­ent mir­a­cles con­vince the local wor­ship­pers that she’s a ves­sel for the word of Jesus Christ. How­ev­er, her blas­phe­mous yet unde­ni­able attrac­tion to one of her fel­low daugh­ters of the lord (Daphne Patakia) could com­pli­cate her rela­tion­ship to the pub­lic of the Church, as well as an unseen God.

Ver­ho­even has nev­er been shy about push­ing hot but­tons, whether that’s Holo­caust-era car­nal­i­ty or the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex, and he’s bring­ing that same con­tro­ver­sy-bait­ing aban­don to his look at the repressed lusts of Chris­tian­i­ty. Pro­duc­er Saïd Ben Saïd has already gone on record as fear­ing reac­tions from fun­da­men­tal­ist Catholic asso­ci­a­tions, which, his­tor­i­cal­ly, has not been bad for business.

Along with the trail­er below, we’ve also includ­ed a look at the offi­cial poster, a cheek­i­ly sac­ri­le­gious one-sheet in which we get a peek at the exposed nip­ple of a woman of the cloth. As our own Han­nah Strong has already not­ed, its design harkens back to a Ver­ho­even clas­sic of the past, sure­ly one of the all-time great posters.

Close-up portrait of a woman with lips slightly parted, set against a plain white background. Text overlays the image, including the film title "Benedetta" and the names of the director and lead actress.

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