Benedetta

When Judith C. Brown's book 'Immodest Acts' came out in 1987, screenwriter Gerard Soeteman was immediately intrigued, and brought the book to his long-time collaborator, director Paul Verhoeven, with the idea to turn it into a movie. Soeteman wrote an early treatment, but due to script problems and Verhoeven's American career taking flight, the project was shelved. Decades later, producer Saïd Ben Saïd finally picked the film up for production based on the original outline. However, Soeteman chose to remain uncredited and wasn't involved in later re-writes by David Birke and director Paul Verhoeven, citing his dissatisfaction with the movie's emphasis on sexual content. Soeteman wanted the movie to be about a woman's struggle for power in a male-dominated world, but was disappointed by how Verhoeven had ditched many of those feminist elements in his script in favor of "fumbling with genitals." Verhoeven defended himself by stating that the source novel had the second title 'The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy' for a reason, and he felt that depicting that side of Benedetta's life explicitly and without prudish restraints was vital to the subject matter.

Referenced in Radio Dolin: Serebrennikov in Cannes, Russian "Inglourious Basterds", Pierce Brosnan... (2021)