Benedetta (2021): Visions, Violence, and the Sacred in Paul Verhoeven’s Blasphemous Masterwork
In the ever-churning ocean of cinema, few directors are as persistently provocative as Paul Verhoeven. Whether he’s satirizing consumerism in RoboCop, interrogating voyeurism in Basic Instinct, or deconstructing colonialism in Starship Troopers, Verhoeven has always been a provocateur—a filmmaker who challenges his audience to question what they see, what they feel, and most importantly, what they believe.
With Benedetta (2021), Verhoeven returns after a six-year hiatus since Elle (2016), offering one of the most audacious entries in his filmography. Based on Judith C. Brown’s historical non-fiction book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Benedetta dives deep into the tangled relationship between sexuality, religion, power, and mysticism in 17th-century Italy. What results is not merely a scandalous tale of a nun who claims to have visions of Christ—though it is that—but a bold, unsettling meditation on belief itself.
1. The Narrative Canvas: Between Flesh and Faith
Set in the Tuscan city of Pescia during the time of the plague, Benedetta opens with a young Benedetta Carlini arriving at a convent, her wealthy parents offering a generous dowry in exchange for their daughter’s placement. Even at a young age, Benedetta is presented as “touched”—divinely marked or perhaps afflicted—with visions and a sense of spiritual intimacy that veers uncomfortably close to madness.
The story spans decades, tracing Benedetta’s rise from novice to abbess, propelled by both her ecstatic visions of Jesus Christ and her sensual relationship with another nun, Bartolomea (played with raw electricity by Daphne Patakia). Virginie Efira inhabits the role of Benedetta with hypnotic complexity: she is saintly, seductive, manipulative, and vulnerable all at once. Efira’s performance anchors the film in a psychological ambiguity that never allows the audience to settle comfortably.
2. Ecstasy and the Body: Carnal, Divine, or Both?
One of the central tensions in Benedetta is the question of authenticity. Are Benedetta’s visions real or convenient? Is she a mystic or a fraud? And does the answer even matter if her influence inspires devotion?
These ambiguities are layered with physicality. Verhoeven doesn’t shy away from nudity or eroticism; in fact, he amplifies it. The film has drawn both acclaim and criticism for its explicit depictions of lesbian sex between nuns. But to reduce these scenes to mere titillation is to miss the point: they are provocations, yes, but they also serve as manifestations of religious ecstasy. In Benedetta’s world, the line between divine communion and physical pleasure is nonexistent.
When Benedetta experiences a vision of Christ pulling her into a rapturous embrace, or when she and Bartolomea use a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary as a sex toy, Verhoeven is not merely being scandalous—he is interrogating the way institutions police the female body, the porous boundary between holiness and hysteria, and the use of divine sanction as a means to personal power.
3. Visions and Violence: The Apocalyptic Tone
Verhoeven constructs Benedetta’s visions with lurid grandeur. These sequences are unlike anything else in recent cinema—operatic, surreal, and violent. Jesus appears to Benedetta not only as a comforting figure but as a warrior slaying snakes and enemies in her name. He is both lover and avenger. In these moments, the film slips into something akin to religious horror or psychedelic fever dream.
It’s here that Benedetta echoes the works of Ken Russell (The Devils), Pasolini (Teorema), or even Tarkovsky’s dreamlike interludes. But unlike those filmmakers, Verhoeven injects a dose of knowing absurdity. The violence is often excessive. The visions are theatrical. We are never told definitively whether they are real. The audience is made to sit in the same doubt as the characters. That destabilization is the point.
4. Bartolomea: The Mirror of Rebellion
Bartolomea, as played by Patakia, becomes the audience’s point of emotional orientation. She enters the convent to escape the brutal violence of her home and becomes both Benedetta’s lover and challenger. While Benedetta ascends to power, Bartolomea remains skeptical. She loves, but she doubts. In many ways, Bartolomea is more truly radical—her rebellion is not sanctified. Her resistance is personal, instinctive, and fiery.
Their love is not tender. It is desperate, frenzied, and occasionally cruel. Verhoeven refuses to idealize their relationship. It exists in a brutal world of misogyny and suppression, and their moments of intimacy often blur into political games, manipulation, and power struggles.
5. The Church as Theatre: Power and Spectacle
Benedetta offers a blistering critique of institutional religion—not merely its hypocrisies, but its reliance on performance. The Church in Benedetta is a stage upon which political power is played out. Miracles are tested with perverse experiments. Pain is inspected like currency. Benedetta, whether sincere or strategic, understands that spectacle moves hearts and minds.
The film’s most startling sequences show her leveraging her wounds (which resemble the stigmata of Christ) to solidify her status. Her suffering becomes her weapon. Her visions, a form of political capital. And yet, Verhoeven never fully condemns her. Instead, he offers her as a mirror: what would any of us do if we found power in a system that disempowers us?
Lambert Wilson as the papal nuncio, a late arrival in the film, plays the role of inquisitor with icy menace. His scenes crackle with tension. His eventual confrontation with Benedetta feels like a battle between two equally cunning performers, each using God as their stage.
6. The Plague and the Female Body
The specter of plague looms over the film, and Verhoeven uses it with thematic precision. Disease in Benedetta is not only physical but spiritual. It becomes an external manifestation of internal rot—whether of the Church, of hypocrisy, or of patriarchal control. The scenes of plague-ridden villagers at the convent gates act as a haunting counterpoint to the cloistered power plays inside. While Benedetta dreams of divine embrace, the world outside is falling into chaos.
The film also positions the female body as both sacred and threatening. From the beginning, Benedetta’s mother warns her of the dangers of beauty. Throughout the film, female bodies are sites of suffering, ecstasy, and control. Bartolomea’s story of sexual abuse, Benedetta’s bloody visions, the examination of stigmata—it all returns to the ways women are disciplined through both doctrine and violence.
7. Cinematic Language: Verhoeven’s Boldest Aesthetic
Visually, Benedetta is sumptuous. Shot by Jeanne Lapoirie, the film has a painterly quality. The convent is cloaked in shadows and candlelight, every corridor echoing with secrets. The costumes by Pierre-Yves Gayraud are striking in their simplicity—habit and robe become masks, as much as any theatrical costume.
Anne Dudley’s score swells with sacred grandeur, enhancing the film’s operatic tone. Verhoeven orchestrates these elements like a conductor, each note of the film vibrating between piety and provocation.
What is perhaps most surprising is that despite its outrageous subject matter, Benedetta often plays it straight. There is little wink-wink irony. Verhoeven trusts the viewer to interpret, to wrestle, to question. He doesn’t guide the audience toward a moral stance—he simply places them within the spectacle and invites them to look closely.
8. The Real Benedetta: History vs. Cinema
Judith C. Brown’s historical work is meticulous, grounded in archival research. The real Benedetta Carlini was indeed a 17th-century abbess who claimed visions and engaged in a sexual relationship with another nun. Her trial records paint a fascinating picture of mysticism, repression, and gender politics.
Verhoeven uses this history as a springboard rather than a blueprint. He infuses it with operatic scale and psychosexual intensity. In doing so, he honors the spirit of the tale while fully owning his creative liberties.
This is not a biopic. It is a myth built on a true story. It is cinema as confrontation.
9. Legacy and Impact: Blasphemy or Brilliance?
Upon release, Benedetta was met with polarized reactions. Some praised its daring, others condemned its irreverence. It was denounced by conservative religious groups and embraced by cinephiles. At Cannes, it was both applauded and scrutinized.
But this polarizing effect is precisely why Benedetta matters. It forces conversation. It demands reflection. It does not let the viewer off the hook. In a time when many films seek comfort or consensus, Verhoeven’s willingness to provoke stands as a radical gesture.
More than a film about sex or religion, Benedetta is a film about belief. How we believe, why we believe, and what happens when belief becomes a weapon.
10. Conclusion: The Fire and the Flesh
Benedetta is not for everyone. It is violent, sexual, heretical, and ambiguous. But for those willing to engage with its provocation, it offers a rare cinematic experience: the kind that unsettles long after the credits roll.
In Benedetta Carlini, Verhoeven has found a perfect avatar for his themes—a woman caught between madness and mysticism, between divine inspiration and cunning ambition. Her story is not just about a nun in Renaissance Italy. It is about every institution that weaponizes belief. Every system that fears the female body. Every soul caught between the sacred and the sinful.
And in telling her story, Verhoeven does what he has always done best: he sets fire to the comfortable certainties of the world, and dares us to watch them burn.
