In the Flesh: Immaculate

The Catholic Church’s obsessive quest to maintain control over the bodies of women, through means both psychological and legal, has resulted in over a century of devastating misogynist violence, the legacy of which runs like a trail of bloody afterbirth from the mass graves under its Magdalene Laundries to the truly incomprehensible suffering of its successful bid to deny access to abortion on a global scale. Michael Mohan’s Immaculate charges this nightmarish legacy head-on with pulpy abandon, probing at the inherent creepiness of old men angrily obsessing over and fetishizing the particularities of virginity, chasing the most obviously specious messianic arguments for anti-choice brutality to their ugly conclusions, and otherwise dwelling on the ways in which its draconian focus on suppressing and controlling sexuality has ensured that Catholicism itself is both dangerously repressed and obsessively, compulsively sexual. Watching the aged Cardinal Merola (Giorgio Colangeli) rant and rave about Cecilia’s (Sidney Sweeney) hymen makes the point as directly as it’s possible to make it: these people are very, very sick.

Sweeney’s engaging in the lead role, especially when she gets to cut loose, and her particular brand of outrageous oil-painted beauty really sells the kitsch nouveau Madonna imagery at the heart of what the convent does with her. The script is competent, the supporting players a lot of fun, and if the atmosphere lacks a bit the spine-tingling thrill of the sisters in eyeless red cloth masks and the ghoulish fetuses in Father Tedeschi’s (Álvaro Morte) lab do a lot to make up for it. There’s a smart insight in the character of Tedeschi, an incarnation of the ways in which the Church has historically embraced and ignored scientific exploration, leading to a fully incoherent system of belief in which faith and fact become hopelessly muddled. Science can clone Christ, which means science is good and true, except when it isn’t. For all that the priests and nuns cloak their monomaniacal ambitions in the jargon of both church and secular intellectualism, there’s nothing to it but the same terrified uncertainty in the face of a world outside their control from which to claim to represent belief.

Immaculate is clearly indebted to Rosemary’s Baby, though it has less to offer in terms of social analysis and character development. Mohan’s film is altogether more conventional, stretching a smaller focus over a longer runtime. Its ending, though, is a strong compliment to Polanski’s classic film, delivering both Sweeney’s best work in the movie and a brutally upsetting final shot. It pivots from Mia Farrow’s exhausted, helpless resignation without falling into the trap of groan-inducing girlboss smarm. It’s desperate, it’s ugly, and it makes you sit with the consequences of the deranged little colony the church has cultivated for itself. There’s an interesting gerontocratic element to it as well, with the convent intended to serve as an end-of-life refuge for elderly nuns. It may not be a mold-breaker, but Immaculate hits its marks and knows its lines.