It’s been a while since someone made an old-fashioned, down-and-dirty nunsploitation movie. Leave it to a guy like Paul Verhoeven to bring the genre into the 21st century. Twenty minutes in, and he’s already showing us nuns showering, shitting, and farting. It’s moments like these when you know you’re in the hands of a master.
Ever since she was a little girl, Benedetta (Virgine Efira) wanted to serve God. Her parents send her off to a convent and she eventually grows up to become a sexy nun. Benedetta takes pity on a battered woman named Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) and begs the abbess (Charlotte Rampling) to take her in. Bartolomea and Benedetta slowly form a romantic bond, but not before Benedetta starts having sexy dreams about Jesus. These visions grow more and more intense, finally resulting in Benedetta receiving the stigmata. She is immediately promoted to abbess, and she uses her power to take Bartolomea into her chambers as her lover. Miffed, the former abbess sets out to see Benedetta tried as a heretic.
As great as the idea of the guy who made Basic Instinct directing a horny nun movie is, I have to say that Benedetta isn’t nearly as naughty or blasphemous as you might think it is. While some of her Jesus dreams are pretty wild, they are more humorous than dirty, and even the scenes of lusty nuns feel like they are holding back a little. That didn’t stop people from being up in arms about the film. If Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” music video taught us anything, it’s that any time a filmmaker tries to compare and contrast religious ecstasy with carnal ecstasy, they are inviting a ruckus.
Verhoeven dips his toe into various exploitation subgenres along the way. There are moments that harken back to the post-Exorcist possession craze as well as the old Mark of the Devil-style witch trial scenes. He doesn’t go headlong into excess like the Verhoeven of old though, which some might find a tad disappointing. I’m not saying the movie necessarily had to be lurid in order to be good, but it does at times seem restrained. Maybe the older Verhoeven isn’t the raconteur he used to be. That said, this is still a solid nunsploitation flick. They don’t crank these things out like they used to, so whenever one comes along, you’ve got to take what you can get.
AKA: Blessed Virgin.
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