Brown called Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, in a manner that only he could.
It would be an understatement to say that Verhoeven adapts this unusual tale, once recounted in a book by Judith C. People started to question Benedetta’s proclamations, and the ensuing investigation revealed the forbidden relationship. In 1619, she claimed to have been visited by Jesus himself, who told Benedetta that she was to marry him.
She also reported having visions and even received the stigmata. She reportedly had a relationship with one of her nuns while she was abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, and she was stripped of her rank and imprisoned when the Papacy found out about it. Paul Verhoeven doesn’t make movies that can be easily dismissed.īenedetta Carlini was a real nun in the early 17 th century in Pescia, a small village in Northern Italy. I’m not sure it all works, but there’s so much of it to consider and unpack and quite simply enjoy that it’s impossible to ignore.
There are times when Verhoeven is throwing so many ideas into his purposefully overcrowded screenplay that it starts to feel unfocused, like a dramatic version of the legendary "Aristocrats" joke. And yet there are also times when it feels like a culmination of his career, a film he was inevitably going to make in how it distills sexuality, corruption, broken systems, and provocation into one fascinating story. Is Verhoeven’s explicit sexualization of religion a shallow provocation, or a deep analysis of how implicit gender bias within institutions of faith only leads to violence and abuse? I’m honestly not entirely sure. The provocateur set his sights this year on classic Catholic imagery, subverting and challenging the structures of religion in his daring “Benedetta,” now playing in limited release after a controversial festival run.
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