“Benedetta” hits the billboard: from “Viridiana” to “Change of habit”, an unmissable review of nuns in the cinema

from the dutch master Paul Verhoeven (Amsterdam, 1938) You can write a lot. Whether it’s his early film work with a twisted obsession with sexuality and violence (such as “Dutch Delights” or “Flesh and Blood”), or his later, more popular Hollywood-made films (“RoboCop,” “The Avenger of the future”, “Basic instincts”).

But luckily we can talk about his great current moment. Because at 84 years old, Verhoeven continues to surprise and provoke. In 2016, for example, she received deserved praise for her fantastic “Elle”, a psychological thriller starring Isabelle Huppert. And now has once again garnered applause (and the occasional rejection as well) with “Benedetta”which had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

A film that has just been released on the local billboard (which seems like a miracle) and that tells the story of a homosexual nun in 17th century Italy. Story full of desire, scandal and sacrilege, inserted in the subgenre called ‘nunsploitation’, which leads us to review 10 other films in which the nuns have been protagonists. There is something for everyone.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger direct this very transgressive film for the time. It focuses on a group of nuns installed in a hospital in the Himalayas. When an English agent arrives to solve some problems in the intern, the sisters’ sexuality will be shaken.

It may not be among the best of John Huston’s films, but it is still interesting for its peculiar portrayal of an American soldier (Robert Mitchum) and a Catholic nun (Deborah Kerr), who strike up a singular relationship when they are stranded in a deserted island.

The stunning Audrey Hepburn plays a Belgian girl who leaves the comforts of her family to seclude herself in a convent and later work as a missionary in the Congo. The film directed by Fred Zinnemann is a diaphanous portrait of kindness.

The brilliant Luis Buñuel, provocateur of those, signs one of his masterpieces here. In it, Silvia Pinal plays a novice who goes to visit her uncle, an old landowner, in a meeting of two worlds marked by extravagance, symbolism and human cruelty. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

The recently deceased Sidney Poitier won his historic Oscar for best actor (the first in that category for an African-American) thanks to his portrayal of a worker who collaborates with a group of nuns in Arizona. Directed by Ralph Nelson.

Anna Karina’s face, framed in a nun’s habit, shines in this film by Jacques Rivette about a young nun who must face the prejudices and scrutiny of a severe mother superior, who even believes that the girl is possessed.

Considered one of the most controversial films, but at the same time the most successful, with a clerical theme. The British Ken Russell narrates with an exaggerated style the depravities and horrors of an alleged case of heresy and diabolical possession in 17th century France. Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed are the protagonists.

The direction of Emile Ardolino and the script by Paul Rudnick are fine, but it is fundamentally the enormous charisma and talent of Whoopi Goldberg that lifts this unforgettable comedy about a singer in trouble with the law who becomes an unusual nun. An instant classic and blockbuster.

It is not a particularly notable film, but it should be noted for its approach to nuns from the horror genre. Spanish director Luis de la Madrid uses the codes of ‘slasher’ to tell the story of young women affected by a series of murders.

With his classicism and his apparent simplicity, John Patrick Shanley builds a shocking and disturbing film about the silenced abuses in religious life. And in this task, Philip Seymour Hoffman stands out in the role of Father Flynn and Meryl Streep as Sister Beauvier.