← Back to Directory
Virgin Territory
Movie

Virgin Territory

2007 • Unknown

Woke Score
4
out of 10

Plot

In Black Death era Tuscany, as in the Decameron, ten young Florentines take refuge from the plague. But instead of telling stories, they have lusty adventures, bawdy exchanges, romance, swordplay, randy nuns, Saracen pirates, and a sexy cow.

Overall Series Review

Virgin Territory, also known as Decameron Pie, is a bawdy historical romantic comedy set during the Black Death in 14th-century Tuscany, drawing inspiration from Boccaccio's The Decameron. The plot revolves around young Florentines escaping the plague and indulging in lusty adventures, romance, and mischief, rather than telling stories. The central conflict is the pursuit of love between a charming thief, Lorenzo, and the beautiful Pampinea, who is betrothed to a Russian Count. The film’s humor is raunchy and relies heavily on sexual innuendo and physical comedy, including multiple scenes in a convent with randy nuns. It makes a concerted effort to satirize the hypocrisy of the medieval Church, featuring characters who are corrupt clergy or fake priests. While the women display significant sexual agency and cleverness in escaping predicaments, the narrative's conclusion firmly re-establishes traditional romantic pairings. The movie is a comedy focused on sexual liberation and adventure, making it more of a traditional satire of institutions and morals than a vehicle for modern political ideology.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The narrative focuses on love, personal adventure, and a rivalry between a local Florentine and a Russian Count, none of which is framed through a modern intersectional lens. Characters are judged by their cleverness, charm, or villainy, not by immutable characteristics or systemic oppression. Casting is historically authentic to a medieval Italian setting.

Oikophobia6/10

The movie heavily satirizes the Catholic Church, a central institution of Western civilization, by depicting nearly all clergy as corrupt and sexually depraved, including a convent full of 'randy nuns' who break their vows. The narrator is a thief who becomes a self-proclaimed priest. This deconstruction of a core Western institution is central to the comedy, reflecting the anti-clerical tradition of its source material, *The Decameron*.

Feminism4/10

Female characters are depicted as clever and sexually confident, taking control of their own bodies and situations. Two women use their sexuality to overpower and escape a group of bandits, and a female character 'ravished' a man to lose her virginity on her own terms. Men are often portrayed as 'happily overwhelmed' by the women. However, the overall narrative arc is a traditional pursuit of marriage and a romantic pairing, which limits the score on the anti-natalism/career-as-only-fulfillment axis.

LGBTQ+1/10

The entire focus of the film is on heterosexual love, desire, and the comedic pursuit of losing one's virginity. The structure is entirely normative, emphasizing male-female romantic couplings as the standard and ultimate goal of the adventure. There is no centering of alternative sexual identities, critique of the nuclear family structure, or discussion of gender ideology.

Anti-Theism7/10

The film’s plot and humor are directly hostile toward the institution of the Church and traditional Christian morality. Priests are fake, nuns are sexually active, and religious vows are treated as a joke to be broken for pleasure. The overall message implicitly endorses a moral relativism where immediate gratification and subjective desire triumph over transcendent moral law during the chaos of the plague.