Paul Verhoeven (83) retains the same indecent look and Cochina that has been exhibiting for half a century, when it was announced as filmmaker with ‘Turkish delights’ (1973).
Scenes such as Sharon Stone’s leg crossout at ‘Basic Instinto’ (1992), the American Bar Dances of ‘Showgirls’ (1997) or the Pistolera Aim in the crotch of ‘Robocop’ (1987) are already part of the iconography
popular.
But age has not appeased the disturbing interest of the Dutch director.
This has been proven at the San Sebastián Film Festival (which ends this Saturday) with the last work of Him, ‘Benedetta’.

The film, whose premiere took place in the past Cannes Festival, is inspired by the book ‘Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Studies in The History of Sexunity)’, from American historian Judith C. Brown
, who studied the real case of Benedetta Carlini, a nun who lived in Italy in the seventeenth century.
From the archives of the ecclesiastical courts, it is known that Benedetta came from a well-located family, and that she entered the convent of the Mother of God, in the Tuscan city of Pescia.
Like other mysticals of the time, she Benedetta began to experience a series of visions and appearances.
She was named Abbess of the convent, while she grew the popularity of her as a Miracles Ask.

Faced with his growing influence, the nuncio in the area made a series of visits to the convent, until one of the religious, Sr. Bartolomea, confessed that he maintained a lesbian relationship with Benedetta and that both had been delivered to impudent acts that included the ‘Frottage
‘
According to the film, Benedetta was condemned and stripped of her abbess rank, although she was allowed to stay in the convent and eat in the refrefter with her companions, yes, sitting on the floor and silently.
She thus remained more than three decades, until the death of her at 1661 at age 70.

The story of Benedetta serves Verhoeven to return to his obsession on the body and his processes of flowering and degradation.
The Belgian actress Virginie Efira embodies Benedetta and makes him putting all the anatomy of her, from the appearance of stigmas to lubricates scenes with her lover.
Verhoeven introduces an even more cloudy element in this relationship: a wooden figurine of the virgin that lesbian nuns carve until the form of a phallus, to use it as a dildo in their sexual games.

The appearance of this element has solved certain Catholic sectors, which have come to ask for the withdrawal of the film.
It is the case of the Citizengo platform (heiress of Hazteiery), which has been collected 200,000 signatures (its objective is half a million) of a French millionaire, Jérôme Seydoux, co-owner of the Pathé producer, so that “does not continue distributing this highly offensive material
“.

“Of course,” Citizengo denounces in the presentation of the campaign, “an open and obscene blasphemy, like this would never have been allowed with Islam or Muhammad. It is tolerated and applauded because it is a Christian nun. When there is no talent,
Blasphemy is the only resource … ”

The text of the petition to Seydoux reads like this: “I want to manifest my concern about the open and obscene sample of a blasphemy. I also want to manifest my discomfort and my feelings offended by this movie. Not only do they go with the homosexuality of consecrated people,
but they show them obtaining sexual pleasure with an image of the Virgin … not only has it offended me, but also to the community of 2,000 million Christians in the world. ”
And he ends up demanding an apology “with the Christian community to which he has seriously damaged.”
In the absence of knowing if the scandal has an effect or not about the box office, the premiere of ‘Benedetta’ in Spain has been ahead of October 1.

Not wanting to get rid of his sexual charge, Verhoeven has always wanted to make clear that his main interest was to investigate religion and the sacred.
What’s more, the film arrives after an unsuccessful attempt to adapt the screens the book that Verhoeven wrote about Jesus of Nazareth in 2007 and that he was going to take the title of ‘Jesus, man’.