CANNES, France (AP) — The veteran provocateur Paul Verhoeven premiered his lesbian nun drama “Benedetta” at the Cannes Film Festival with a solemn vow to…
CANNES, France (AP) — The veteran provocateur Paul Verhoeven premiered his lesbian nun drama “Benedetta” at the Cannes Film Festival with a solemn vow to resurrect sexuality in movies. “Benedetta” predictably stirred the French Riviera festival over the weekend. In it, the Belgian actor Virginie Efira stars as Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century French nun who communicates directly with Jesus and who falls in love with a farm girl saved by the convent (Daphné Patakia). An entertaining riot of eroticism, violence, Catholicism and plague, Verhoeven’s movie has been both dismissed as “nun-sploitation” and hailed as “a good old fashioned art-house costume shagathon.” Cannes, where movies like “Taxi Driver” and “Blue Is the Warmest Color” have made controversial premieres, loves a jolt of violence or a splash of sex. The arrival of “Benedetta” has sent nun puns flying around the Croisette.
