Paul Verhoeven has been deliberately pushing the limits of the amount of nudity and sex that can be shown in mainstream films for a long time, starting with "Soldier of Orange" (1977), and peaking with the iconic pantyless moment of Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct" (1992) and the flagrantly trashy "Showgirls" (1995). Stone much later claimed that the director tricked her into doing that scene and got more of her visible onscreen than she was expecting would be there. And I'm sure that a significant percentage of viewers from the current generation will criticize "Benedetta" as containing an exploitative amount of nudity and sex, but young costar Daphne Patakia has given an interview in which she claims to have been completely comfortable with everything Verhoeven asked of her, and went into it with full knowledge of his expectations, and did not feel coerced or exploited. Which leaves us with being able to make the point that without the nudity and sex scenes, there literally is no story here. The moral dilemmas or lack thereof of the characters involved needed to be explicitly played out onscreen, not just referred to after the fact with a couple of lines of innuendo and accusation.
Benedetta was a young girl who fervently believed she was born to be a bride of Christ, even to the point of believing she could carry on conversations with Him, and beseech Him to demonstrate God's power to others. As she grew into a young woman with those same beliefs, she realized that he might not always answer her prayers, and decided it could not hurt to take her own steps to manifest those miracles. It's hard to determine from the script with any certainty whether this was serving a need for her own recognition as his vessel and conductor, or she just decided his will needed amplification for the rest of the people to see it. Since I don't speak French I had to read the English subtitles and I'm willing to allow for the possibility that this question was better answered in the French dialog than in the translation. Or perhaps leaving that ambiguity unresolved is just fine and what Verhoeven intended. There is no ambiguity about the source of the manifestations that Benedetta showed to others, they were all her deceptions. But her internal dialogs with Jesus may be a madness or a deliberately creative imagination.
I had a hard time deciding whether I liked or disliked this film, and I can't really say I've resolved that question yet, because of the large amount of scenery chewing -- there's much more of that than of the sex. But I'm willing to rationalize it based on the inherent struggles people dealing with faith and doubt, love and lust, betrayal and guilt, and the terror of a viral plague all at the same time must be tormented by that causes their thoughts and expressions of them to be chronically overwrought. The Puritanism of the Church's commanders is still tormenting and dividing our civilization and fostering those overwrought personal struggles to this day -- most of us have learned almost nothing of value from the actual Christ in two millennia but far too many lies from the organizations that purport to document him, so we still flagellate ourselves and each other "in his name."
In spite of the constant tension and borderline insanity in the story, I have to give the cast credit; they made the scenery chewing feel appropriate to the telling. According to this site, star Virginie Efira was 41 during filming, but the character she was playing was in her late 20's and to my eye, she easily looked the right age. Her performance made me believe in her professions of faith in spite of the faked manifestations. Patakia was a vivacious breath of fresh air, (reminiscent of Juliette Binoche in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1988) ), who I hope to see a lot more of; and Rampling was her splendid, measured yet imposing, self. Lambert Wilson, as the papal nuncio, played the ultimately cowardly authoritarian with relish. The film was shot beautifully; exteriors, interiors, sex scenes, public market and riot all had a lusciously authentic look. I wanted to give it 6.5 stars rather than 7, because it could easily be characterized or anticipated by some viewers as soft porn, but since this site doesn't allow halves, and there's really a lot more story than that, I rounded up instead of down. Overall, I think it was a story worth telling, and worth seeing as it was made.
Benedetta was a young girl who fervently believed she was born to be a bride of Christ, even to the point of believing she could carry on conversations with Him, and beseech Him to demonstrate God's power to others. As she grew into a young woman with those same beliefs, she realized that he might not always answer her prayers, and decided it could not hurt to take her own steps to manifest those miracles. It's hard to determine from the script with any certainty whether this was serving a need for her own recognition as his vessel and conductor, or she just decided his will needed amplification for the rest of the people to see it. Since I don't speak French I had to read the English subtitles and I'm willing to allow for the possibility that this question was better answered in the French dialog than in the translation. Or perhaps leaving that ambiguity unresolved is just fine and what Verhoeven intended. There is no ambiguity about the source of the manifestations that Benedetta showed to others, they were all her deceptions. But her internal dialogs with Jesus may be a madness or a deliberately creative imagination.
I had a hard time deciding whether I liked or disliked this film, and I can't really say I've resolved that question yet, because of the large amount of scenery chewing -- there's much more of that than of the sex. But I'm willing to rationalize it based on the inherent struggles people dealing with faith and doubt, love and lust, betrayal and guilt, and the terror of a viral plague all at the same time must be tormented by that causes their thoughts and expressions of them to be chronically overwrought. The Puritanism of the Church's commanders is still tormenting and dividing our civilization and fostering those overwrought personal struggles to this day -- most of us have learned almost nothing of value from the actual Christ in two millennia but far too many lies from the organizations that purport to document him, so we still flagellate ourselves and each other "in his name."
In spite of the constant tension and borderline insanity in the story, I have to give the cast credit; they made the scenery chewing feel appropriate to the telling. According to this site, star Virginie Efira was 41 during filming, but the character she was playing was in her late 20's and to my eye, she easily looked the right age. Her performance made me believe in her professions of faith in spite of the faked manifestations. Patakia was a vivacious breath of fresh air, (reminiscent of Juliette Binoche in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1988) ), who I hope to see a lot more of; and Rampling was her splendid, measured yet imposing, self. Lambert Wilson, as the papal nuncio, played the ultimately cowardly authoritarian with relish. The film was shot beautifully; exteriors, interiors, sex scenes, public market and riot all had a lusciously authentic look. I wanted to give it 6.5 stars rather than 7, because it could easily be characterized or anticipated by some viewers as soft porn, but since this site doesn't allow halves, and there's really a lot more story than that, I rounded up instead of down. Overall, I think it was a story worth telling, and worth seeing as it was made.