Benedetta

B For Benedetta

Benedetta
France/Belgium/Netherlands 2021
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Pathé

Okay, so Benedetta is the final movie in the second of my two Nunsploitation weeks for the blog this year... the one I’ve been building to in the hopes I could time my review with the same week of its release (or just after). Of course, when you see that a film has been made by a quality filmmaker and adapted from Judith C. Brown’s account of events... the book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (or as Verhoeven puts it on the opening credits of this movie... “This film was inspired by real events”)... you have to wonder if it really is actually going to qualify as a nunsploitation film or more as a respectful, historical account of what we are told are the facts. Well now, Verhoeven is a consummate artist and, no matter what genre he chooses, he usually ends up delivering a very ‘classy’ looking picture, which is exactly what he does here...

But, of course, he really is also a fairly schlocky director in terms of the content of his work and, frankly that’s not a criticism. I reckon it could have gone either way but, of course, what he finally delivers, while certainly being respectful of the characters involved and also presenting quite an epic feeling, historical drama is... well I think anyone who’s seen this would have to agree that it’s a modern example of ‘proper nunsploitation’, no two ways about it. Certainly, in terms of the many exploitative moments in the movie, it really goes a lot further in terms of what it gets away with than the majority (if not all) of the films I’ve reviewed in my two nunsploitation weeks. This doesn’t, of course, make it the best of these but, I have to say it’s certainly one of the better ones I’ve seen.

Okay, so I’m not going to go into full synopsis mode on this one but I will say, in terms of judging the basic elements of the story, is that it deals with Benedetta (played by Virginie Efira) seeing many visions of Christ, manifesting stigmata and also taking on a lesbian lover in Bartolomea (played by Daphne Patakia). There is political intrigue between the various interested Catholic church parties, Benedetta and the Abesse (which I assume is the equivalent way of saying Mother Superior, played by Charlotte Rampling) and various trials and tribulations suffered by all the key players, set in the 17th Century midst the backdrop of the plague.

What Verhoeven does here... and kinda gets away with to an extent... is to try to show both sides of the coin in terms of the reality of Benedetta’s visions and he’s definitely treading on fairly similar ground to the brilliant, recent horror/thriller movie (depending on what the audience brings to it in their final analysis) Saint Maud... which I reviewed here. So you will see what Benedetta sees when she has her visions and it could be argued, when you think back to the intervention of a wild bird on her behalf at the opening of the movie when she is just a child, that he also shows one or two minor miracles. He does load it a little more in Benedetta’s favour than the way Saint Maud treats its central character, it has to be said but ultimately the film, although not having as visceral a finale as the former movie, gives us a similar ‘on the fence’ kind of stance. So although, for example, we’ll see many of Benedetta's visions of Christ, we are also given the possibilities of self inflicted stigmata, although it’s these very points that are played on as the drama unfolds and it all gets a bit ‘Salem witch trially’ for a bit.

And then there’s the heavy exploitation element... the fact that Bartolomea whittles down Benedetta’s miniature statuette of the blessed virgin into a dildo for their use, for instance. Or the torture scene where the pear of anguish is used to extract a confession. There’s also the element of blasphemy in this and, though I honestly wouldn’t usually bother to mention it, Verhoeven has already been questioned on this area regarding this film and gone on to deny that the film is blasphemous because, as he puts it, it depicts things that really happened. But, you know, because of the grey area more than heavily implied by the director when he shows us visions of Christ at their most exploitative, you have to maybe wonder at how he got away with that answer... he should maybe have just responded by an admission and then question the relevance of the accusation instead, I think. Because, yeah, you will see Jesus lopping off the heads of killer snakes, persuading Benedetta to get naked and up on the cross with him, save her from rape by slicing up soldiers and so on (and there’s a certain sense of duality in that scene in terms of ‘is it really Christ... no, the nightmare just changed’ aspect of that particular scene)... so, yeah, probably just a little bit blasphemous but, I’m not really the one to judge on that kind of stuff. It is, however, one of the most pulpy of dime store pulps takes on Christ that I can remember seeing in a film. A heroic Christ who wields a sword to get his woman out of danger, so to speak.

The shot set ups are not too intricate but they’re all pretty nice to look at and the movie feels like something very big and polished. Verhoeven does a nice thing with some of his transitions by pitching the occasional, very different, colour palette to segue into another scene. For example, you’ll go from those warm creams, oranges and beiges of the interior of the Abbey to, suddenly, the outside of the Abbey in a storm at night, where it’s all blues, greens and blacks. Not overly saturated or anything like that (although the ‘comet’ scene nearly gets there) but even these more subtle colour changes brush up against each other from scene to scene with a pleasing visual frisson that helps the movie trundle along at a fair pace (and it’s quite a long movie so that’s a good thing). Ann Dudley’s score helps the whole thing along too and, yeah, in one scene depicting self flagellating monks, you get to hear yet another rendition of the Dies Irae, which is kind of a curious comfort by this point.

And I’ve not got much else to say here about Benedetta other than, it really is a pretty exploitative piece of nunsploitation, the girls (who are often naked) look great and are so enthused in their roles that they pull off amazing, believable performances plus, my favourite bit (and see if you can spot it when you see it), there’s a dire part of the movie which brought an unwitting smile to my face when I realised the dialogue was the 17th Century Paul Verhoeven equivalent of, well, the ‘Pagliacci joke’. Yeah, that was a good moment. So that’s me done with both this and the second nunsploitation week and, I guess if you like the genre, you’ll definitely like Benedetta. So, yeah, done with the nun themed weeks now but not quite done with nunsploitation as a genre yet. There are a couple of good Blu Rays which have  just been released which I think could be considered part of this cycle, including what sounds like one in the big Severin box set of All The Haunts Be Ours folk horror movies sitting on my shelf so, yeah, there will be some more of these reviews coming at some point, I think.

Elle

Palindromic Vengeance

Elle
France/Germany/Belgium 2016
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
UK cinema release print.

I’ve quite liked some of Paul Verhoeven’s films in the past, with Robocop being the stand out one for me. It has to be said, though, that the films I’ve seen by him have tended to be American productions and, somehow, feel more like comic book movies than real films for consenting adults. Not a pop at Verhoeven, by the way... I think this applies to most theatrical releases these days and sometimes that kind of stylistic choice goes down a treat. However, I’m not used to seeing a film which is a, relatively, complex and subtle picture like we have here from a director like him.

One of the partial reasons for this, apart from the writing, is that he’s filled the roles with incredible actors, most of whom I don’t know but many of whom seemed familiar and recognisable. Recognisable or not, though, they all do some great work here... not least the true star of the piece, Isabelle Huppert. I’ve not seen too many of the films made by this outstanding French actress, living in a small town which is even, technically, in London means the opportunities to see anything other than big budget US movies is fairly limited... but I’ve been a fan of her work ever since seeing her in the lead role in one of my favourite living director’s films... Hal Hartley’s Amateur. Truth be told, it was her name that brought me to Elle rather than Verhoeven’s (well, actually it was a train). Plus it had some good word of mouth so I took a trip out to the Hackney Picture House to give it a look (the film isn’t showing locally to me... surprise, surprise).

Elle stars Huppert as Michèle Leblanc, the joint founder and director of a video game company. She’s a successful business woman but her character is a lot more interesting, emotional, devious and complex than her seemingly muffled exterior might lead her friends to believe. Part of this wealth of depth which, in all honesty, I imagine very few actresses other than Huppert could have successfully  pulled off, stems from an extremely traumatic incident from her childhood which has obviously left a mark on her and which, perhaps, gives some insight in the way her character reacts to things in certain scenes. Which is an observation I couldn’t imagine myself writing all that often about a female character in an American film, to be sure but, if cinema is good at one thing it’s good about its diversity of expression, so maybe I’m being a little unfair to Hollywood in this comparison.

The film starts off with a black screen and the sound of Michèle’s struggles and cries on the soundtrack, followed by a cat watching what she is going through before Verhoeven’s camera reveals a scene of Michèle being beaten and raped in her house. The killer, wearing a body suit and mask which makes him vaguely reminiscent of the comic book character Diabolik, leaves her recovering on the floor. The scene is quite intense and, as the film plays out, we see the impression it has made on Michèle’s mind as she flashes back to it internally, replaying and sometimes changing the outcome of the encounter. This is a good tool to help the audience grasp the weight of the incident on the central character, actually, because the way she deals with this event externally is with considerably less alarm and upset than one might reasonably expect from a woman placed in this kind of situation.

The first half of the film is basically a mystery as, while still getting threats and a humiliating computer game movie of her made public, she tries to learn the identity of her assailant who, by the way, doesn’t stop at attempting just one attack on her through the course of the film. Meanwhile, she has a convoluted life to handle, having an affair with her best friend and business partner’s husband, amongst other amorous interests, and dealing with her ex-husband, her mother and her son. When she finally reveals who the rapist is in the movie, I have to admit I was just a little disappointed, at first. I can usually figure out the identity of the mystery at the heart of most movies I watch and, alas, in this movie I had already figured the identity of this person the first time we see him in a social context without his mask. That being said, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the movie and certainly, this mystery is only the first half of the film. The next part is the long played out vengeance of Michèle as she takes stock of her social situations and slowly pulls together various threads of her own convoluted life to bring about a denouement which I didn’t really, quite, see coming but which absolutely fits her character’s history. The path to the conclusion of the film is not a black and white one and, I’m glad to say, not all the scenes in this movie follow that dull, cause and effect pattern endemic to a lot of modern movies. For instance, Verhoeven includes a sequence where Michèle gets one of her employees to teach her how to use a gun, setting up the idea that she will buy and use one at a later point in the film. But she doesn’t and it’s exactly this kind of detail in the drama of these kinds of richly woven movies that make them so much more interesting than a lot of product around. Scenes in a story don’t always have to lead to something else, they can just be about re-enforcing the inner state of where a character is at, rather than lead you onto the next stage of the journey.

Anne Dudley’s score to the movie is somehow slow, light and more ponderous than I was expecting from this film but, once the character of Michèle is in your head and you see the way she deals with events in her life, it makes perfect sense and seems completely right for it. I’d like to hear it away from the movie but the CD is so expensive compared to others that I probably won’t rush out to buy this one straight away (and I’m certainly not going with a cheap download option... thanks but no thanks music labels). It certainly maintains an atmosphere of ‘muffled reality’ in some scenes which perfectly reflects the way Michèle conveys herself to her friends and relatives.

Elle is a dark work of art with a wonderful cast and some nice choices by the director which don’t push the movie over the top in its exploration of, in all honesty, the kinds of events and incidents which could easily be exploited in a more spectacular fashion. Despite figuring out who the main antagonist is (and even that word may be too strong for his character, in some respects... this movie greyshades its depiction of events pretty well) I had a really good time with this and would recommend it to anyone who wants to see something a little different to the kind of stuff you usually get in cinemas these days. Lovely film. Not enough of these kinds of affairs are given a release in this country. Which is a shame.