How Paul Ver­ho­even defies genre trap­pings with Benedetta

Paul Ver­ho­even comes at genre not just like a satirist, but more specif­i­cal­ly like a car­i­ca­tur­ist. The imp­ish Dutch film­mak­er spe­cialis­es in iso­lat­ing an artis­tic category’s defin­ing qual­i­ty and exag­ger­at­ing it to warp his sub­ject, ulti­mate­ly upend­ing our pre­con­ceived image of it. Dur­ing his sub­ver­sive Hol­ly­wood peri­od, he reg­u­lar­ly turned the obscen­i­ty of the US inward by giv­ing the peo­ple a sick­en­ing dose of what they wanted.

Such anti-block­busters as Robo­Cop and Star­ship Troop­ers ratch­eted up the red-blood­ed thirst for vio­lence in the police and mil­i­tary, while Show­girls turned the lubed-up Amer­i­can libido into a writhing, thrash­ing par­o­dy of itself. With his return to Europe came an accom­pa­ny­ing shift away from out­sized indul­gence to equal­ly over-the-top taste­ful­ness. Rather than sav­aging com­mon-denom­i­na­tor forms like action or romance by going gar­ish, he’s tak­en to class­ing up the dis­rep­utable. With Elle, he brought a fresh aes­thet­ic dis­ci­pline and emo­tion­al nuance to the rape-revenge thriller, and his lat­est film Benedet­ta con­tin­ues a proud, sac­ri­le­gious tra­di­tion in the most inspired terms yet.

From the moment that the phrase ​“Paul Ver­ho­even les­bian nun movie” entered the cinephilic lex­i­con, the naugh­ti­est ver­sion of the con­cept dared us all to antic­i­pate it. (The eye-grab­bing pro­mo­tion­al poster bear­ing a cheeky semi­cir­cle of nip­ple still left a great deal to the imag­i­na­tion.) The breath­less tweets from the Croisette pre­mière at 2021’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val seemed to con­firm that dirty old man Ver­ho­even was back at full lech, with excit­ed chat­ter about whit­tled dil­dos and vagi­nal tor­ture instru­ments fly­ing this way and that. But the con­tent belies its style, which brings a severe, hushed grace even to its most pro­fane gestures.

The film’s not not nun­sploita­tion, ded­i­cat­ed to the propo­si­tion that hotbeds of fever­ish erot­ic ener­gy rage under the prim sur­face of sis­ters in Christ, and unshy about show­ing how it escapes. How­ev­er, this clas­si­fi­ca­tion implies too much to strict­ly apply, its con­not­ed lurid sen­si­bil­i­ty alien to Verhoeven’s high dra­ma of sin­cere jeal­ousy and devo­tion. There’s no short­age of sin, but there may be a chance at sal­va­tion to go with it.

Chang­ing course from expres­sion to repres­sion as he dou­bled back across the Atlantic, Ver­ho­even trained his sights on a sub­cul­ture orga­nized around sys­tem­at­ic self-denial of plea­sure as its chief tenet. As a 12-year-old Benedet­ta Car­li­ni is informed upon enrolling at a Tus­can con­vent, the body is a shame­ful thing and we must estrange our­selves from it as devout­ly as pos­si­ble. Of course, the eter­nal para­dox at the heart of Catholi­cism is that there’s noth­ing hot­ter than want­i­ng some­thing you can’t have, as it’s dan­gled just beyond your reach; a quandary that a desirous Benedet­ta (Vir­ginie Efrie) con­fronts in adulthood.

Her unde­ni­able attrac­tion to fel­low nun Bar­tolomea (Daphne Patakia) sends her into lit­er­al parox­ysms of horni­ness – try as she may to chan­nel those feel­ings onto the Sexy Jesus rock­ing her in fan­tasies straight out of a bodice-rip­per paper­back. She sees lust every­where in reli­gion: the con­stant orders to kneel and stand, the BDSM-adja­cent rit­u­als of pun­ish­ment, the tit­il­lat­ing close­ness of flesh­ly temptation.

In keep­ing with nun­sploita­tion cus­tom, Ver­ho­even draws atten­tion to the hypocrisy, prej­u­dice, and igno­rance of the Church; the head abbess Felici­ta (Char­lotte Ram­pling) shakes Benedetta’s father down for mon­ey in a meet­ing to arrange the girl’s ser­vice, and then exco­ri­ates him for try­ing to nego­ti­ate ​“like a Jew.” Her pet­ti­ness and cru­el­ty reveal them­selves to have roots in envy once Benedet­ta starts com­muning with God – the pow­er strug­gle between the women not so dis­sim­i­lar to a sex­u­al bat­tle of wills – with the Almighty as the con­test­ed tro­phy hunk. Orga­nized reli­gion is just anoth­er way for those in posi­tions of author­i­ty to assert their influ­ence, chan­neled through patholo­gies of pent-up need that trans­late to dom­i­na­tion and submission.

And yet Verhoeven’s hand­some visu­al pol­ish goes hand in hand with a more recep­tive atti­tude toward Chris­tian­i­ty out of joint with the premise’s ori­gins in high-grade trash. Because his con­tempt for the Church stems from seri­ous regard for the virtues they per­vert, he’s not throw­ing the holy baby out with the blas­phe­mous bath­wa­ter. He’s said in inter­views that he believes in the exis­tence of Christ but not his divin­i­ty, more ​“inter­est­ed” in how the man ​“was extreme­ly impor­tant for our cul­ture and the devel­op­ment of humanism.”

The film would sug­gest a high­er degree of cred­u­lous­ness on his part — Benedet­ta seems tru­ly touched by the spir­it, her voice low­er­ing itself to a gob­lin reg­is­ter while pos­sessed — even as it torch­es the insti­tu­tion built around the faith. Ver­ho­even knew that the most icon­o­clas­tic way to approach the hot-under-the-wim­ple nun film was to play it straight, turn­ing down the sen­sa­tion­al­ism in favor of a more stu­dious exam­i­na­tion of how eter­nal car­nal­i­ties col­lid­ed with the dog­ma of a but­toned-up point in his­to­ry. There’s too much full-frontal nudi­ty to com­plete­ly dis­count Verhoeven’s pruri­ent side, and too much fer­ven­cy to write him off as a horn­dog with one thing on the brain.

Benedet­ta is released in UK cin­e­mas 15 April and streams exclu­sive­ly on MUBI from 1 July.