NYFF: "Sibyl"

by Jason Adams

Living in a big city is a great incentive to get lost in other people's stories. Just walk outside and you can see people falling in love, people falling out of love -- I once saw a couple have an insanely over-the-top meltdown banshee screaming in the middle of Sixth Avenue in the pouring rain as taxi cabs honked to pass. It's a wonderful way to distract you from yourself -- turn on the public television right at the stoop or in the subway station. And it's why lots of writers move to cities -- all that inspiration smashing you in the elbow. 

I can only imagine then what kind of a double draw, a draw squared, it would turn out to be if you were openly invited right into those people's personal dramas. What if you were both a writer and a psychotherapist, desperately trying to keep your own demons at bay at the same time?

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Paul Verhoeven Sticking To Dark Habits, Making Erotic Nun Movie

Paul Verhoeven is a walking, talking trigger warning; it’s not difficult to imagine him sitting behind an Inside Out-style control center smashing his fist on every red button in sight, cackling with perverse glee as he crawls under your skin like a psychologically disturbed porcupine with a bad case of rabies. Fresh off the especially spiky heels of last year’s Elle – his infamous “rape revenge comedy” that catapulted légende française Isabelle Huppert onto the stages of American awards ceremonies, better late than never – Variety reports that the Dutch provocateur plans to grind out a 17th century nunsploitation flick entitled Blessed Virgin as his next feature, replete with Sapphic undertones and hellish visions of religious erotica; a series of descriptors that should surprise approximately no one when it comes to all things Verhoeven.

After all, this is the same director who obliterated the military-industrial complex with giant man-eating space bugs, exposed the American entertainment industry with pole-licking showgirls, and, yes, drove a hatchet through the contemporary French bourgeoisie with a number of problematic sexual assaults.

Based on the book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Blessed Virgin tells the sordid true tale of Sister Benedetta Carlini’s subversive exploits as the Christ-communicating, same-sex bedding abbess of an Italian nunnery. Going straight from one hyper-religious sister to another, Elle star Virginie Efira is set to reteam with Verhoeven to play the lead. Do Paul Verhoeven’s (intentionally) problematic visions delight or disgust you?