Outgoing movies what to see at the cinema at the weekend
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One of the scandalous films of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival finally arrives in our cinemas: we are talking about “Benedetta”, the latest work by Paul Verhoeven, a Dutch director who throughout his career has often wanted to provoke with films such as “Basic Instinct”, “Showgirls ” or the more recent “Elle”.
At the basis of the story chosen by Verhoeven there is a true story, that of the mystic Benedetta Carlini, told by Judith Brown in “Atti impuri” of 1986: the young Benedetta, daughter of a wealthy family, enters the convent of Pescia, in Tuscany, in a period in which the black plague spread misery throughout the peninsula. The young nun soon begins to have strange visions, between the erotic and the religious, which arouse perplexity and fascination at the same time. inside the convent. Benedetta, meanwhile, will approach a novice with whom she will create an ever more intimate bond.
Right from the subject, one immediately grasps how the source material is perfectly in Verhoeven’s strings, a director who for a good part of his career has played with eroticism, trying to provoke and undermine the rules of more conventional cinema.
A journey between grotesque and mysticism
Verhoeven mixes the sacred and the profane more than ever, within this film which alternates profound moments with others that are too superficial, dark and disturbing passages with others that are completely grotesque and over the top. Given this continuous emotional swing, made up of many changes stylistic, the film does not always manage to involve, but in any case it is one of the most intriguing products seen at the cinema in recent months. It is in fact an enjoyable and anything but banal product, absolutely not to be underestimated, thanks also to the excellent care overall aesthetic: the director of photography, Jeanne Lapoirie (who counts among her previous works “8 women and a mystery” and “120 beats per minute”), has created effective plays of light and shadow, capable of showing all the psychological controversies of the main character of the film. The work of a cast is also good in which, in addition to the protagonist Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson and Daphne Pa takia, the latter in the role of the nun with whom Benedetta is having an affair.
Umberto Eco – The library of the world
Among the novelties of this week there is also a small but important Italian documentary, entitled “Umberto Eco – The library of the world”, made by Davide Ferrario. Starting from the legendary personal library of Umberto Eco – composed of more than 30,000 volumes of titles contemporaries and 1,500 rare and ancient books – Davide Ferrario has made a documentary that not only describes an extraordinary place, but tries to grasp the very meaning of the idea of a library as a “memory of the world”, as Eco.Ferrario himself defined it , who had collaborated with Umberto Eco on a video installation at the Venice Art Biennale a year before the writer’s death, had access to the library thanks to the active collaboration of the family and the result is a precious feature film, which should also be shown in schools.Capace to beautifully capture the identity of Eco, this documentary is a simple product, but capable of making us reflect on the world that around us and, more generally, on ourselves.
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