Review of Benedetta (2021) by Mauro_Lanari — 11 Jun 2023

(Mauro Lanari).

Sex, money and power there where one accesses after a triple vow of chastity, poverty and obedience. The film recalls how at the time the religious or consecrated choice was rarely made by vocation and much more often by necessity, moreover the history of monastic, cloistered and priestly life is full of erotic events of every "gender". But is Verhoeven interested in this? If he is "allergic to any form of Manichaeism, [positioning] himself in the shaded areas of desire and faith" (Marzia Gandolfi), he would have done better to select a story different from that of Benedetta Carlini, which has not come to us with documents that confirm his doubts (there is Manichaeism even in skepticism to the bitter end), from vocational veracity to the stigmata, from miracles to visions (very far from the visionary nature of Ken Russell): it is he as director and not the reports we have received about the nun that insinuates lies, manipulations, ambiguities, deceptions, scams, by collapsing mysticism and mystification with inserts taken haphazardly by Joan of Arc. "Written with David Birke, after the habitual Gerard Soeteman gave up for creative differences" (Federico Pontiggia). From materialist atheist to materialist atheist: fundamentalism sucks in any càse.