In Viridiana, Buñuel exposes the contradictions between ideals of purity and patriarchal power.

What is most powerful to me, is the empathy he shows Viridiana while also showing her (like many others’) devotion is merely self-serving. The sacrifice religion and purity culture center is done mostly to moralize. Ego disguises itself as virtue, both in the characters and in our real lives.

There is a lot to say about sexual domination in this film. The most explicit image of this is Jaime wrapping his dead wife’s gown around him. Buñuel has had androgynous characters before, but never with a metaphor or undertone of violence like this one. It’s not just a surreal joke or a repeating image, it reveals Jaime’s desire to wear femininity while subjugating it. If womanhood is a fashion, he can turn it into a costume he can control. Buñuel has criticized these macho figures before, but Viridiana goes a step further and criticizes the sexual contract.* I think there is a strong point made here. The film is also saying women can sign on to a sexual contract and subjugate other women. Jaime’s maid was complicit. Her participation in facilitating Viridiana’s assault reinforces the uncomfortable truth that anyone can sign onto patriarchal power.
Buñuel also dismantles the myth of the rapist as an external threat. Rape can come from inside the home, the family structure, and the trusted circle. No walk of life is immune to male violence, not even the innocent or charitable.

The film plays with imagery of penitence, death, vampirism, and the fetishization of innocence. Viridiana becomes a kind of symbolic virgin drained by those who claim her purity. Sanctity becomes another mask for exploitation.

* I think a lot of Buñuel’s films can be analyzed through different chapters of the book The Sexual Contract.