It’s not a tale of innocence lost, however, and that’s maybe the most interesting thing about it. Based loosely on a true story, and adapted partly from Judith Brown’s 1986 book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, the film charts the adult Benedetta’s rise to power in her cloistered world while she discovers her forbidden sexuality. It’s the story of Benedetta Carlini (played as a grown-up by Virginie Efira), a devout girl who claims to commune with God and is entrusted to a convent in Pescia, Tuscany. He’s become more of a prestige provocateur since returning to Europe, and Benedetta, at least on its surface, seems to combine the more somber and reflective Verhoeven of recent years with the horny pop auteur he used to be. After rising to fame in the Netherlands, the director conquered American cinema by bringing both devil-may-care vigor and a European sense of irony to the types of films that in another timeline might have been standard-issue studio sleaze, sex thrillers and sci-fi shoot-’em-ups. Once upon a time, the one thing you could never say about a Paul Verhoeven film was that it felt tired. It’s been years since Verhoeven left Hollywood, but there’s still enough Hollywood in him, it seems, to undercut his film’s sincerity. It’s also hard to shake the feeling that the film wants to outrage us into a response, but its supposed transgressions often feel tired and pro forma. It might be his most personal film, a genuine effort to understand the connection between two of his key obsessions, spiritual faith and human impulse. In some ways, it encapsulates the director’s best and worst instincts.

For a movie in which an adult nun’s childhood statuette of the Virgin Mary is carved into a dildo and then used on her, Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta is surprisingly unsurprising.

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