CANCELED: Benedetta
- This is a past program
Now 83, Paul Verhoeven, the boundary-pushing director of Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995), remains untamed by age, delivering a raucous hyperdrama of lust, scandal, and profanity set almost entirely in an otherwise drab, monotonous convent. Based on the story of a 17th-century nun in Tucscany, whose visions propelled her to institutional power, the film follows its namesake’s upward trajectory as she keeps a feverish lesbian affair under wraps. Dramatic excess and over-the-top mischief combine to make this work at once outrageous, provocative, amusing, and transgressive. (Courtesy of IFC Films)
(2021, dir. Paul Verhoeven, color, 137 min.)