Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021)

It was apparently preordained that a deliciously overstuffed film such as Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta would elicit an overdetermined screening yesterday afternoon at the 59th New York Film Festival. In addition to the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property protesting the film outside and asking for reparations (for what, though?), the screening was the North American premiere of the film. It was also my partner's first time at the NYFF and my first time seeing a movie in a theatre since early 2020. Even more redolent for me, this is the first film I've seen since the death last year of my number one filmgoing buddy Bill Weber. I will carry his loss with me at every screening I attend. 

NYFF programmer Dennis Lim introduced the film by asking if any Catholics were in the audience. After about two or three dozen patrons raised their hand, Lim thanked them for sharing their Sunday with us. Verhoeven was not in attendance due to travel restrictions. But David Birke, who co-wrote the screenplay with Verhoeven, was on hand to provide some brief context and then we were off. No Q&A afterward.

I don't want to say too much about a film that most people will not get to see until December, especially one that depends on shock for much of its savor. So just thematics ahead, no spoilers. Loosely based on Judith C. Brown's Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Benedetta tells the story of Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira), a nun in seventeenth-century Italy who had a sexual relationship with another nun, Sister Bartolemea (Daphne Patakia). She experiences visions of Jesus and starts to bleed from her hands and feet. Due to these apparent miracles, she is made abbess of the convent, much to the chagrin of the previous abbess (Charlotte Rampling) who has serious doubts about the authenticity of Benedetta's visions. And when the lesbian relationship is discovered, problems very much ensue.

Verhoeven never settles the question of whether Benedetta's mysticism is real or just really great theatre. In her visions, Jesus is a studly Samson who vanquishes lurid CGI manifestations of fleshly guilt, a link back to the video game work of Isabelle Huppert's character in Elle, Verhoeven's previous provocation (2016). And yet Benedetta experiences these moments so fervently that they halt several convent ceremonies. Clues are dropped to suggest that she is faking her stigmata. But Jesus may be telling her to do so, therefore, how fake is it really? The central question of the film then becomes how willing one is to believe what one knows full well is not true.

In this, Benedetta reminds me of "Between Things and Souls: Sacred Atmospheres and Immersive Listening in Late Eighteenth-century Sentimentalism," a recent essay by Anne Holzmüller in which she analyzes late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century travel reports of Protestant German travelers to the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week. The reports record all manner of disappointments: patrons blithely eating oranges throughout the chapel; constant chatting before the illumination of the cross (pic below); Allegri's Miserere sung out of tune; improper positioning of the Pope during the papal blessing on Easter Sunday; etc. And yet, they also register succumbing to the high theatre of the events. Thus, in Holzmüller's estimation, "[a]s pietist, art-loving tourists, [they] face the dialectic tension between a desire for authenticity and immediacy on the one hand and, on the other hand, an awareness about the illusionary and deceptive character of the experience to its full extent" (231).*

As with Holy Week, so with Benedetta. And with Benedetta. Bartolemea, for one, wants to believe in Benedetta's mysticism. But she sees the fakery. How does one reconcile the two, if at all? It's a fundamental tension at the heart of religion (even for the protestors outside, I suspect, especially given how young so many of them were) and at the heart of cinema as well. Beyond the surface nunsploitation outrages, Benedetta's wrestling with these antinomies is Verhoeven's most compelling achievement. 

Grade: A-minus

*Holzmüller's essay appears in Music as Atmosphere: Collective Feelings and Affective Sounds, by Friedlind Riedel and Juha Torvinen, eds. London and New York, Routledge, 2020, 218-237.