When the young and eccentric Benilde becomes unexpectedly pregnant, her deeply religious family and inquisitive townsfolk fixate upon Immaculate Conception. A new formal complexity entered into Oliveira's cinema in this second part of his celebrated Tetralogy, which focuses an unflattering spotlight on the absurd hypocrisies of religion and public displays of piety. One of Oliveira's breakthrough films, Benilde was his first to interweave theatrical and cinematic language into an overt questioning of the limits of the art film.