Benedetta (2021) review

As a child, Benedetta Carlini (Elena Plonka) is taken to a convent to be watched over by the Abbess (Charlotte Rampling) but when she becomes an adult (Virginie Efira) that's when things really get wacky, as her "visions" of Jesus of Nazareth (her "husband") get more intense, she "develops" the stigmata and gets in a bit of trouble for having a lesbian relationship with fellow sister Bartoloméa (Daphné Patakia).  Carlini was, in fact, a real person (it's based on a book by historian Judith C. Brown), but Verhoeven treats the whole situation in such a jokey way that it just seems like a bunch of transgressions stitched together: from "bonding" with Bartoloméa while defecating to the "visions" of a neutered Jesus slicing the heads off of snakes to carving a statue of the Messiah into a dildo ... it's extreme but not very fun.  This very subject can be done effectively - 2012's superb Beyond the Hills being one example - but it seems evident to me that the director wants to make it into some kind of cartoon for him to have a good chuckle over.