With a serious promise to restore sexuality in cinema, legendary provocateur Paul Verhoeven showed his lesbian nun drama “Benedetta” at the Cannes Film Festival. Over the weekend, the French Riviera festival was sparked by the film “Benedetta.” Virginie Efira, a Belgian actress, plays Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century French nun who has direct communication with Jesus and falls in love with a farm girl rescued by the monastery (Daphné Patakia).
Verhoeven’s film has been dubbed “nun-sploitation” and acclaimed as “a good old-fashioned art-house costume shagathon.” It is an exciting riot of sexuality, brutality, Catholicism, and pestilence. Cannes loves a spark of violence or a splash of sex, as seen by the contentious premieres of films like “Taxi Driver” and “Blue Is the Warmest Color.” Nun puns have been flying over the Croisette since the arrival of “Benedetta.”
“People take off their clothes when they have sex,” Verhoeven stated on Saturday. “I’m struck by how unwilling we are to confront life’s realities. In my perspective, the purity that has been introduced is incorrect.” The renowned 2016 French-language thriller “Elle” gave Verhoeven, the 82-year-old filmmaker of “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls,” an art-house return.
He has long argued that sexuality is a natural component of life, and so of cinema. “People are fascinated by sexuality,” Efira added. “There aren’t many directors who understand how to shoot it. But Paul Verhoeven has been dealing with this huge problem remarkably since the beginning. Nudity is meaningless if it isn’t presented beautifully. That isn’t Paul’s style. When we took off our clothes, everything was really happy.” “Benedetta,” written by Verhoeven and “Elle” partner David Birke, is based on the nonfiction book “Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy” by Judith C. Brown. Carlini was a real 17th-century abbess who was prosecuted and imprisoned for her claims of supernatural visions in the early 1600s.
Verhoeven was adamant that nothing in his film could be called “blasphemous.” “It’s mainly true. Of course, we modified a few things, but it’s (a true story),” Verhoeven explained. “You may debate whether or not something was bad, but you can’t change history.” he continued, “So, I think the word blasphemy is ridiculous for me in this case.”
Verhoeven, on the other hand, sees “Benedetta,” which IFC Films has bought for distribution in North America, as a progressive film. “We see what happened in 1625, how people — our people, Western European people — thought about a lesbian love tale, and where we are now, isn’t it?” Verhoeven asked. “We’re probably not quite there yet, but I believe we’ve made significant progress.” And I viewed the contrasts between then and now as another reason to make the film.”