Ramin Setoodeh Executive EditorRacy sex in a convent? Explicit dreams about Jesus Christ? A coming-of-age lesbian love story?
Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” featured all that and more, leaving its premiere audience at the Cannes Film Festival searching for words to describe the movie they’d just seen.But in the end, the French approved.
The period drama screened on Friday night at the 74th annual Cannes, where it was showered with a robust five-minute standing ovation.The foreign-language movie — loosely adapted from the book “Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy” — stars Belgian actress Virginie Efira as Benedetta Carlini, a 1800s French nun who believes she is possessed by Jesus Christ.