Benedetta

Director: Paul Verhoeven

2021 / 131min / DCP

Inspired by the life of Benedetta Carlini, a nun of 17th-century Tuscany whose claims of mystic visions drew the attention of church higher-ups, their investigations eventually revealing a verboten sexual relationship between Carlini and one of her fellow nuns and leading to her imprisonment, Verhoeven’s earthy, irreverent film immerses one in the squelchy squalor and earthly delights of Counter-Reformation era Europe, with Virginie Efira a revelation in the title role and Charlotte Rampling, as the abbess of the convent, conveying roiling inner turmoil beneath a cooly composed exterior. An examination of the difficult relationship between religious submission and sexual liberation, featuring some of the most memorable foley sounds in recent cinema.