The provocateur returns to competition with this French-language drama, based on a true story about a 17th-century nun who was chastised for her religious visions and lesbian affairs.
is a film about a woman clawing her way to power in a male-dominated world, finding her own voice and achieving emancipation. It’s all viewed through a male gaze, and never seems ashamed of it. And yet to consider this tale of faith and acumen triumphing over false virtue as a mere case of exploitation is to write it off too easily.
And yet the larger question posed by Verhoeven is what such sincerity is good for at a time and place where women had very little agency — where being a nun, which meant giving up carnal desires and limited social freedoms, was one of the only ways to achieve any sort of liberty, even if it meant within the confines of a holy prison.
“Your worst enemy is your body,” a nun had warned Benedetta early on, and a significant portion of the film involves her resisting, and eventually overcoming, that lesson, with Bartolomea helping her along. As the two get close to committing the act, Benedetta miraculously shows signs that she may be some kind of saint, her hands, feet and forehead bleeding like Jesus.
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