Benedetta’s gravitational center is a wooden statuette of the Virgin Mary, which is plucked from the hands of a faithful girl, stashed in a dark drawer, only for it to turn, many years later, into a sex toy and a final stop on her way to the funeral pyre. Someone had to tell this story garnished with visionary voluptuousness and infantile transgressions, and that certain someone was Paul Verhoeven. Speaking of which: is there any living creator nowadays who is more gifted at depicting contradicting emotions that are constantly just about to slip into masochism, terror, or vulgarity, than this eighty-year-old revenant that is experiencing a full artistic swing? In Benedetta, Verhoeven goes for another round on the territory of climaxes, after the entanglement of senses and fluids that he plotted in Elle (2016), surprising in his sudden accelerations, using old patterns whose shine he restores and small attentions meant for an audience that is feverish, and worthy of a champion that is in full control of his means. The result? This directorial pirouette in which two women - the plumpy Virginie Efira and the ghastly Daphne Patakia - mutually seduce each other towards the extremities of the soul, and in between their bodies, a je ne sais quoi that speaks volumes in terms of abandon, magnitude, and fabulous shamelessness is born.

Victor Morozov

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Film critic and journalist; writes regularly for Dilema Veche and Scena9. He studied film theory in Grenoble, Paris, Dublin.

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