Immaculate Is Pro-Choice

Weird right wing Sydney Sweeney fans don’t want to hear it.

White supremacist weirdo ghoul Richard Hanania saw Syndey Sweeney’s cleavage back in March and declared that “Wokeness is dead.” The argument, to the extent one existed, seemed to be that thin conventionally attractive blonde women being conventionally attractive is a rebuke to the sexless left—even though the right has been obsessed with trying to ban pornography and sex education for years.

There’s some other evidence against Hanania’s argument that Sydney Sweeney breathing is an indictment of progressive politics. Namely, her 2024 passion project Immaculate, which she produced, and which is a searing indictment not just of the Catholic church (as Hanania had to grudgingly admit) but of patriarchy in general, and of the current attack on abortion rights in particular.

Sweeney plays an American nun, Cecilia, who has come to Italy to take her vows and work in a convent dedicated to the care of terminally ill sisters. Things start to go rapidly awry when Cecilia discovers that, even though she is a virgin, she is somehow pregnant. Father Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte) and the other convent leaders tell Cecilia that she has been blessed by God and that her child will save the world.

She’s skeptical, and sure enough it turns out that Tedeschi is a crazed eugenist who has artificially inseminated her with genetic material from a nail which he believes crucified Jesus. Things escalate from there, with a lot of blood and screaming. The Rosemary’s Baby blueprint of paranoia and creeping dread is built up and then abandoned for more standard issue slasher final girl empowerment.

The film is not as good as Rosemary’s Baby nor is it as satisfying as the best slashers. Director Michael Mohan has trouble building tension and character in the 89 minute run time. Father Tedeschi is a standard issue villain with little in the way of memorable lines or quirks. Worse, the script doesn’t give Cecilia much in the way of a convincing spirituality, and Sweeney seems miscast as a nun—she’s much more comfortable saying “God damn it!” than kissing the ring of her supposed spiritual advisor. The First Omen, which covers similar territory, is much better at conveying convincing devotion, which is essential if the betrayal of that devotion is going to actually feel like betrayal.

The delivery, then, leaves a good bit to be desired. But the message is loud and clear. This is a film about how men appropriate women’s bodies for their own designs and their own pleasures,. The indictment of the Church’s stance on abortion—and of its coverup of sexual violence—couldn’t be much more pointed.

Early in the film, an Italian security guard (who seems to have his own designs on Cecilia’s body) asks her if she is sure about her decision to enter a convent. She says that she does not think of it as a decision. It’s a comment which abstracts her agency, evokes abortion debates about choice, and foreshadows the ways in which her agency is taken away from her by “God” and his self-declared spokespeople throughout the movie.

To not make your own decisions is to cede not just choice, but care. One of the film’s more chilling sequences isn’t really horror, but more straightforward melodrama. After one of the other nuns tries to strangle her out of jealousy for her divine pregnancy, she is rushed to the convent’s doctor’s office. The doctor assures her and Father Tedeschi that the baby is all right. But Cecilia is not satisfied. “He’s all right, but I’m not all right!” she says.

Father Tedeschi attempts to feign concern, much as thuggish forced birthers try to pretend they care about women’s health. But the proof is in the grotesque patriarchal violence. When Cecilia begs to be taken to a hospital, Tedeschi refuses, again mirroring the preferences of the right, who hold life in such high regard that they force women to bleed out or die of sepsis rather than provide them with “immoral” medical care.

The film resonates with the current attack on abortion care. And it also, I think, resonates with the right-wing effort to appropriate Sydney Sweeney. Hanania and his ilk looked at Sweeney, and particularly at her breasts, and rushed to their keyboard to say that her body was theirs. They were the arbiters of what she means and of who she is when she dares to appear in public in a low cut outfit.

The fact that in this case the right has decided that Sweeney is a hood ornament for their cause, rather than deciding to shame her or insult her, is a mere detail, just as it’s beside the point that Tedeschi and his goons keep telling Cecilia that she’s blessed. When you claim that you own someone else’s body, you will ultimately feel empowered to harm them, because, after all, the body is yours, and how dare the person in that body gainsay your possession or your entitlement?

Immaculate isn’t a great film. But it is a clear statement that women in general, and Sydney Sweeney in particular, have the right to their own bodies and their own choices. That’s a message that Richard Hananaia and his weird right christofascist shithead buddies all need to hear.