How, in a biopic, might one go about telling the life story of Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century lesbian nun who became abbess of the Tuscan convent at Pescia, only to be stripped of her position and put in prison for having a well-documented affair with a fellow sister?
How anyone else might do it is moot. But Paul Verhoeven, director of Showgirls? Take a wild guess. Outrageous impudence and a winking relish for bad taste are more or less his religion. So, indeed, this film, unleashing orgasms so loud it’s a wonder the entire sisterhood don’t come a-running, is every bit the very naughty, Carry On Up the Convent romp you might salaciously imagine.
Loosely adapted by Verhoeven and David Birke from a 1986 biography called Immodest Acts, this is the director’s second French-language picture in a row after 2016’s rape thriller Elle, a project which thrillingly danced on the borderline between art and trash.
This is a bit more of an open-and-shut case, which is not to say that it isn’t intermittently, if not always convincingly, serious, too. Verhoeven zhuzhes things up from time to time between vigorous sessions of sex-toy action which uses – wait for it – a whittled statuette of the Virgin Mary. His film poses a lot of questions and prompts even more.
How did Carlini (an impressively passionate Virginie Efira) actually gain the top spot at this nunnery, despite the unrestrained Sapphic tastes herein ascribed to her? That’s (sort of) explained. Amid mystical visions of a seductive Christ and nightmares in which she’s violently attacked by would-be rapists, she reveals a nearly complete set of gory stigmata to her sisters. Evidence of the missing crown of thorns then shows up too – if it took a shard of broken pottery to clinch the deal, so be it. She’s hailed as a holy emissary, however disconcertingly mad her outbursts.
The outgoing abbess Sister Felicita (crafty-as-ever Charlotte Rampling) has her doubts, but then she’s a doubting figure in general, who runs the place as a business, emptying the pockets of the young Benedetta’s dad when she takes the veil.
Things are relatively sedate until the arrival of Sister Bartolomea (Daphné Patakia), a feral wild child begging to be rescued from the deeply unsavoury clutches of her father. You wouldn’t call this one cut out for a higher calling: she does a loud performative fart on the first night she’s inside, and from then on offers more carnal temptations than Carlini can possibly withstand. The first to intuit anything untoward is Felicita – of course, as Rampling hints by way of warning, a Reverend Mother always knows. Before giving away her office chamber, she digs a peephole through the wall, and it would be quite the understatement to say her suspicions are confirmed when she spots where the figurine is going.
