Elle truly felt like a turning point in Paul Verhoeven’s wide-ranging career that spanned films like Basic Instinct and Showgirls as well as Robocop and Starship Troopers. His filmography up to 2016 was made with tongue firmly in cheek and while Elle still had moments of that winking filmographer, it felt more serious and grounded than the films he was known for. When Benedetta began to pick up steam this year, it was met with Catholic protests and a poster channeling Halsey’s album cover energy with a partial nip slip, suggesting a return to Verhoeven’s more exploitation roots. With a steamy narrative based on the queer love of a real nun, as told through the filmmaker’s talents, what surprised me most about Benedetta is how restrained it actually is.

Of course, restrained is a relative term when discussing the Basic Instinct director. But for a Verhoeven film about lesbian nuns, Benedetta feels particularly chaste for the typically outrageous filmmaker.

Sure, there’s dildos made out of wooden statues for the Virgin Mary for every Christian religious institution to get in a tizzy over. And there’s plenty of “frottage” as the act has been historically described surrounding the events. And young Benedetta takes the exposed nipple of a statue of the Virgin Mary in her mouth to suckle on it...but these nunsploitation trappings solely augment a story that can be analyzed and discussed in many different ways.

It begins with a child Benedetta (Elena Plonka) as she’s escorted to a convent where her father will sell her to the Abbess (Charlotte Rampling) as a future bride for Christ. A woman’s supposed worth is a concept Benedetta is very keen to explore and it starts with this discussion of a dowry, her father haggling over how much the young girl is worth. As a child wandering the convent, she’s told she should fear her body and her intelligence. “Your worst enemy is your body. Best to not feel at home in it,” a nun warns her when Benedetta complains about the itchy wool she’s forced to wear. The nun waggles her wooden finger at her before stating, “intelligence can be dangerous, girl.” Over the course of its 130 minute runtime, Benedetta continually explores these two topics.

As an adult, Benedetta (Virginie Efira) is reintroduced to the viewer in a play where her body is foisted up to the angels and God, her parents watching appreciatively in the audience. But while she’s supposed to be comatose in the play, Benedetta has an erotic visage of Christ that causes her feet to twitch with excitement. “I saw God!” she later professes to her mother when asked why she was moving her feet. It’s at this moment that Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) bursts into the convent, on the run from her father’s abuse and incest. Bartolomea needs an escape and prostrates herself in front of the Mother Superior to beg for entry into the convent. Unlike Benedetta’s family, though, Bartolomea is poor and the convent needs its dowry, so Benedetta convinces her father to pay for Bartolomea’s cost.

Benedetta and Bartolomea begin to get close, even though Benedetta is resistant at first, telling Mother Superior proudly that she has never sinned and punishing Bartolomea for her sexual advances. But Benedetta’s visions become more erratic and erotically tinged, and soon is afflicted with the stigmata. It’s here that the script by David Birke and Paul Verhoeven (based on Judith C. Brown’s book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy) becomes more thematically dense as it weaves between ideas explored through possession films, the backroom politicking among the established church leadership and a sexual revolution. It’s also where similarities between the film and Ken Russell’s perennially banned or censored film The Devils is shown in stark relief. Both films tackle real life figures in the church mixed with sexuality, betrayal and hints of the plague standing in the background.

But where Benedetta shines is with its portrayal of the titular character and it’s Benedetta herself that creates the opportunities for dense analysis. The church’s treatment of women and downplaying their intelligence and sexuality is a cornerstone of the film. Early scenes establish the worth of a woman and Benedetta is warned about her intelligence. When the church discovers that Bartolomea and Benedetta are sexually attracted to each other, they are confused because it goes against their ideas of sexuality. Even though they understand the idea of homosexuality, it was always applied to two men because it’s impossible for women to be attracted to each other. As Benedetta’s religious ecstasy builds from stigmata to powerful and violent eruptions, the film doesn’t completely ascribe to the idea that she is truly possessed. Nor does it fully commit to the idea that she’s faking it.

Benedetta could be the story of a disenfranchised woman, discovering power through her intelligence before being burned, a la Icarus. It could also be the story about a woman discovering her sexuality and using her power to create a safe space to experience queer love in the one place wholly opposed to the concept. Both are intriguing and both will birth copious amounts of writing about the film. Regardless, though, Benedetta utilizes the period lesbian romance as a jumping point to explore queer love, religious ecstasy and the intoxication of power to delirious results.