Benedetta

Set in late 17th-century Tuscany against the looming shadow of the bubonic plague, Benedetta follows Benedetta Carlini, a devout young woman who was dedicated to the Convent of the Mother of God in Pescia as a child. From early youth, Benedetta demonstrates a seemingly miraculous affinity for religious visions and divine intervention, earning both reverence and guarded skepticism from the convent’s pragmatic Abbess, Sister Felicita.

As an adult, Benedetta’s cloistered life is upended by two pivotal forces: the arrival of Bartolomea, an abused, destitute farm girl seeking sanctuary, and an escalating series of intense, visceral visions of Jesus Christ. When Benedetta suddenly manifests the bleeding wounds of the stigmata, the convent is thrust into the center of ecclesiastical politics, transforming her into a revered local mystic and destabilizing the monastery's established hierarchy.

As Benedetta and Bartolomea embark on an intimate, forbidden love affair behind convent walls, spiritual zeal merges inextricably with earthly desire and political maneuvering. The convent becomes a volatile arena of factional rivalry, prompting local authorities and the papal nuncio to investigate whether Benedetta is an authentic vessel of God, a dangerous heretic, or an extraordinarily shrewd opportunist.

Director Paul Verhoeven uses the historical case of Benedetta Carlini to dissect the boundary between genuine spiritual ecstasy and calculated political performance. The film posits that within a rigidly patriarchal, repressive institution, a woman's body, desires, and claimed communion with the divine become her only viable weapons for agency and self-preservation. Rather than definitively categorizing Benedetta as either a pure saint or an outright charlatan, Verhoeven illustrates that belief, eroticism, theatricality, and power often coexist within the same human impulses.

The Cunning Machiavellian Con Artist: Benedetta is viewed as an acute political strategist who consciously manufactures visions, self-inflicts stigmata with glass shards, and uses religious theater to usurp power from the Abbess and protect her lesbian relationship within a deadly patriarchal society.

In early 17th-century Italy, convents frequently operated as aristocratic warehouses for unmarried daughters and centers of regional economic activity. For cloistered women, claiming mystical visions was one of the few avenues available to challenge ecclesiastical hierarchies.

Filmed in 2018 and delayed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and post-production schedules, the film's depiction of a community besieged by the bubonic plague and enforcing strict quarantine borders carried uncanny contemporary resonance.

Premiering at Cannes 2021, the film drew praise for its fearless tonal balance, biting humor, Jeanne Lapoirie’s rich cinematography, and central performances by Efira and Rampling. Critics noted its subversive deconstruction of church dogma and gender dynamics, though some conservative groups condemned it for blasphemy.

Regarded by arthouse audiences and film scholars as a late-career triumph for Paul Verhoeven—a provocative historical study that interrogates faith, power, and desire with characteristic audacity.

Praised elements include:

• Virginie Efira’s performance, balancing holiness, sexual magnetism, and ambiguity.
• Charlotte Rampling’s sharp, nuanced portrayal of the pragmatic Abbess.
• The script's wit, refusal to moralize, and blending of high-art aesthetic with pulp vitality.
• Jeanne Lapoirie’s lensing and Anne Dudley’s choral score.

Points of criticism and controversy centered on polarizing reception of explicit erotic sequences and the Virgin Mary statuette scene, debates regarding whether the sensuality leaned into the "male gaze" or functioned as feminist subversion, and tonal shifts moving between serious historical drama, camp, and body horror.