Miles Pattenden

Catholicism gets a bad rap when it comes to sex these days. The Church fixates on condoms and abortion. It isn’t always big on homosexuality either. Paul Verhoeven’s ‘historically inspired’ film, on one level, explores the hypocrisies that arise from such callow credos: the religious renounce the flesh but flagrantly eroticise spiritual and interpersonal relationships. Carnal obsessions abound on screen. Nuns mortify themselves (quite literally) and male clergy are reassuringly lascivious. The whole film is as revealing of the female figure as you would expect from the director of Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995). Indeed, those who buy their ticket for the soupçons of Sapphic frottage are unlikely to be disappointed.

To kidnap one pope might be regarded as unfortunate; to kidnap two looks like a pattern of abusive behaviour. Ambrogio A. Caiani tells the story of Napoleon’s second papal hostage-taking: an audacious 1809 plot to whisk Pius VII (1742–1823) from Rome in the dead of night and to break his stubborn resolve through physical isolation and intrusive surveillance.