Benedetta 4K 2021 FRENCH Ultra HD 2160p

Benedetta (Virginie Efira) was placed as a child in a convent of strict rules, where there are few words about God, but much about money and power. "Temptation" is an anti-clerical film that burns away the illusions around the sanctity of the church. The church, like any other institution, is a theater, where people have to play certain roles. Benedetta was a clever girl, became a clever woman, a beautiful actress, who at length convinced everyone that she was communicating with the Lord. She embodied the modern saying, "fake it till, you make it," and what helped her was the poppy seed tincture that was given to her during her nighttime seizures. If the currency of the church is faith, the richest is a saint "marked" by God. The affect produced by the potion allowed the woman to put stigmata on her hands and feet, evidence of a connection to Heaven due to religious exaltation.

Benedetta 4K Review
Costume movies about lesbian love repeat the same clichés: the noise of the clothes, the attention to the body parts and the discourse on its freedom. But "Temptation" (original title "Benedetta") was directed by Paul Verhoeven, best known for "Basic Instinct" (1992) with Sharon Stone. "Instinct" showed passionate sex on screen, far removed from life and a couple of steps away from porn. The director's male gaze (English term male gaze) is expressed in an objectifying portrayal of a woman: she always has her hair styled, her body shaved and fresh makeup on her face.

Virginie Effira as Benedetta Carlini in a scene from Temptation
Verhoeven's heroine is a fatal blonde, you can't get close to her or you'll burn out. Stone's character's bisexuality is also an expression of the male gaze, where lesbian sex is not disgusting to men like sex between his kind, but only arousing. By the end of the 2010s, Hollywood had all but abandoned objectified portrayals of women, reflecting the global wave of feminism changing people's consciousness. Additionally, several films about love between women emerged that took it out of the category of exoticism - Portrait of a Girl on Fire (2019, Celine Sciamma), Alice and Marcela (2019, Isabel Coichet) and Ammonite (2020, Frances Lee). These pictures find female appeal not in danger, not in the masculine goal of "winning" and "winning the prize," but in sensuality.

Virginie Effira as Benedetta Carlini in a shot from Temptation
Paradoxically, the objectifying Paul Verhoeven also comes to sensuality. Benedetta (Virginie Effira) was placed as a child in a convent of strict rules, where there are few words about God, but much about money and power. "Temptation" is an anti-clerical film that burns away the illusions around the sanctity of the church. The church, like any other institution, is a theater, where people have to play certain roles. Benedetta was a clever girl, became a clever woman, a beautiful actress, who at length convinced everyone that she was communicating with the Lord. She embodied the modern saying, "fake it till, you make it," and what helped her was the poppy seed tincture that was given to her during her nighttime seizures. If the currency of the church is faith, the richest is a saint "marked" by God. The affect obtained from the potion allowed the woman to put stigmata on her hands and feet, evidence of a connection to Heaven due to religious exaltation.

Benedetta is not counted as a saint, but is made the new abbess of the convent. The previous chapter, Sister Felicity (Charlotte Rampling), saw Benedetta's actions as overbearing, but Benedetta's real sin was egotism. She believed in her own chosenness and closeness to God and moved from human self-consciousness to divine self-consciousness. Therefore, worldly sins did not concern her. Benedetta chose love, the second Chosen One after Jesus was Bartholomew (Daphne Patakia), who escaped from her family of rapists to a convent.

"Temptation" is based on the documentary work of researcher Judith C. Brown, who studied lesbian practices during the Renaissance. Paul Verhoeven did little to distort the facts and made Benedetta a woman alpha. It is worth paying tribute to the director: he never portrayed women as silly dolls, but followed the tradition of film noir, where femmes are beautiful, clever and cunning. Such is Benedetta, who confuses the viewer by the finale, as she destroys the line between playing the believer and her usual behavior. Only one thing can be said: Benedetta's heart belongs to love, which does not end in love for the Lord. Her sexual freedom is a protest against dogma: "The worst enemy is your body." Verhoeven declares war on the church, singing of female beauty and thus achieving a feminist message in the story. His radical gesture is in one of Benedetta's dreams of removing Christ's loincloth and seeing women's body parts. If Ariana Grande wrote the song God Is a Woman, why can't Paul Verhoeven make a movie about it?