Paul Verhoeven blesses Cannes with lesbian nun drama

The veteran provocateur Paul Verhoeven premiered his lesbian nun drama “Benedetta” at the Cannes Film Festival with a solemn vow to resurrect sexuality in movies

CANNES, France -- The veteran provocateur Paul Verhoeven premiered his lesbian nun drama “Benedetta” at the Cannes Film Festival with a solemn vow to resurrect sexuality in movies. “Benedetta” predictably stirred the French Riviera festival over the weekend. In it, the Belgian actor Virginie Efira stars as Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century French nun who communicates directly with Jesus and who falls in love with a farm girl saved by the convent (Daphné Patakia). An entertaining riot of eroticism, violence, Catholicism and plague, Verhoeven's movie has been both dismissed as “nun-sploitation” and hailed as “a good old fashioned art-house costume shagathon." Cannes, where movies like “Taxi Driver” and “Blue Is the Warmest Color" have made controversial premieres, loves a jolt of violence or a splash of sex. The arrival of “Benedetta" has sent nun puns flying around the Croisette. “When people have sex, they take their clothes off," Verhoeven said Saturday. "I’m stunned, basically, how we don’t want to look at the reality of life. This purity that has been introduced is, in my opinion, wrong.”