Benedetta follows a young Italian woman who enters a convent in Tuscany during the seventeenth century. She claims that Jesus sends her visions and later becomes a powerful abbess. Her life changes when Bartolomea, a poor young woman escaping an abusive father, joins the convent and becomes her lover. The story mixes romance, religious visions, sex, violence, dark jokes, plague, and a trial over Benedetta's claims.
The film makes a lesbian relationship a central part of its story, not a side detail. Benedetta and Bartolomea use their desire to challenge the rules of a Catholic convent, while Benedetta uses visions and religious power to rise above other women. The story often treats church leaders as people who trade money, status, and punishment while hiding their own sins. It also turns Christian images into sexual and violent jokes, so its attack on religious authority is clear even though the setting is historical.
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Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Benedetta.
Woke representation / casting
Not present. The main cast is made up of European women and men in a seventeenth-century Italian convent. The women’s central roles fit the setting, and there is no clear diversity-first casting message or unusual mix of identities.
0%
Woke political dialogue
Not present. The characters speak about visions, sex, faith, church rules, money, and punishment. The movie does not use repeated modern speeches about identity, diversity, or activist politics.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
Benedetta’s affair with Bartolomea is a main plot, and the two women have repeated sexual and romantic scenes. The story presents female desire as a source of freedom and power inside a church that bans sex between women. Benedetta also rises through a female religious world while using visions to challenge the people who control her. The film links queer love, women’s power, and rebellion against old sexual rules so closely that the identity theme is impossible to miss.
90%
Western institutional / cultural critique
The convent treats faith as a source of money, status, and control. The male church official uses the trial, threats, and torture to protect the Church’s power while hiding his own sexual wrongdoing. The story shows church leaders as hypocritical and treats punishment of women as cruel. The criticism is repeated and important, but it stays in the seventeenth-century setting instead of using modern political speeches.
56%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. The movie adapts the real Benedetta Carlini and keeps the historical account of her same-sex relationship as its base. It adds a riot and a more dramatic ending, but those changes do not swap an established character’s identity or role.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Catholic and pro-life groups called the movie blasphemous because it shows lesbian nuns and turns a Virgin Mary statue into a sex toy. Small protests took place at the New York Film Festival premiere and outside some theaters. Social media repeated the anti-Christian and anti-lesbian complaints, but the available evidence shows no large boycott or review-bombing drive. The backlash was visible and repeated, yet it stayed mostly fringe and religious.
55%
Creator track record context
Paul Verhoeven has a moderate record of films about sex, women with power, and attacks on powerful institutions, but no strong DEI or activist public profile. David Birke often writes about women making their own choices, sexual violence, and power that can go wrong without a strong political profile. Judith C. Brown’s work centers lesbian history and women, gender, and sexuality. The listed producers have low to moderate scores, and the casting director has no activist record. The title’s subject matches the strongest parts of this creative history.
49%
Production
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