Within the first two minutes of Benedetta’s prologue in which its namesake’s younger incarnation compels a bird to shit in the eye of a potential assailant it’s clear that Verhoeven is in his comfort zone; if the movie doesn’t necessarily push beyond those confines, it confirms them as a uniquely spacious and fertile patch of cinematic terrain, where provocation and pleasure get intertwined on a molecular level and nearly every line cuts two ways, as a statement of principles and a sick joke.