BENEDETTA (2021) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Paul Verhoeven
Virginie Efira, Daphne Patakia, Charlotte Rampling,
Lambert Wilson, Louise Chevillotte, Olivier Rabourdin,
Hervé Pierre, Clotilde Courau, David Clavel
A devout young girl enters a 17th-century convent and comes under the watchful eye of Mother Superior Charlotte Rampling. She grows up to be a devout young woman with a few issues, and this being a nunsploitation movie by Paul Verhoeven, things get weird. It's a virtual catalogue of everything you'd hope to see in a picture like this: torture, hysteria, sacrilege, full frontal nudity, lesbian sex, corruption, suicide, mob violence, flagellation, pestilence, burnings at the stake and the stigmata. All that's missing, really, is Eric Idle calling for the plague-cursed villagers to bring out their dead. Maybe that's in the director's cut.
