By Travis Johnson
Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Starship Troopers) was always an odd addition to the Hollywood A-list, and while we enjoyed the way be brought his, shall we say, continental sensibilities to big budget schlockbusters, we should have known that it wouldn’t last, with his output dropping off precipitously after the poorly received (and just plain poor, really) Hollow Man back in 2000.
Happily, the success of last year’s troubling rape-revenge drama, Elle, seems to have put Verhoeven firmly back in the saddle, with his producing partner Saïd Ben Saïd announcing that their next project will be Blessed Virgin, an adaptation of the 1986 book, Immodest Acts: The Life Of A Lesbian Nun In Renaissance Italy, by Judith C. Brown.
Ah, bless.
As Amazon tells us, “The discovery of the fascinating and richly documented story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, by Judith C. Brown was an event of major historical importance. Not only is the story revealed in Immodest Acts that of the rise and fall of a powerful woman in a church community and a record of the life of a religious visionary, it is also the earliest documentation of lesbianism in modern Western history.
“Born of well-to-do parents, Benedetta Carlini entered the convent at the age of nine. At twenty-three, she began to have visions of both a religious and erotic nature. Benedetta was elected abbess due largely to these visions, but later aroused suspicions by claiming to have had supernatural contacts with Christ. During the course of an investigation, church authorities not only found that she had faked her visions and stigmata, but uncovered evidence of a lesbian affair with another nun, Bartolomeo. The story of the relationship between the two nuns and of Benedetta’s fall from an abbess to an outcast is revealed in surprisingly candid archival documents and retold here with a fine sense of drama.”
Which is really just shorthand for “historical lesbian nun potboiler”, particularly in the hands of the director of Showgirls and Basic Instinct. And Flesh + Blood, come to think of it.
Belgian actress Virginie Efira, who had a small role in Elle will star, but the big news is that scripting duties will be handled by Gerard Soeteman, who worked with Verhoeven on his early Dutch films Soldier Of Orange, The Fourth Man, Turkish Delight, as well as his more recent WWII resistance thriller, Black Book – and if you thought the shower scene in Starship Troopers was pushing the boundaries, you need to get those films in front of your eyes quick smart.
This is going to be fun – Verhoeven’s bawdy, flagrant authorial voice taking on a a tale of religious mania, oppression and forbidden sexuality in a period setting? That’s just gravy. In the current climate it’s probably going to offend absolutely everyone across the political spectrum, but Paul V. has never been one to shy away from that sort of thing.
More as it develops.
