“May I remind you, we shot it just before the 2018 election.” “The two protagonists in Paul’s mind were Jesus and Trump,” Efira says. Verhoeven even compared RoboCop to the son of God. The Dutch director, a member of the Jesus Seminar, tried for years to make Jesus: The Man, and wrote a non-fiction book titled Jesus of Nazareth. Though Verhoeven is famed for erotic thrillers ( Basic Instinct, The Fourth Man) and subversive Hollywood flicks ( Total Recall, Starship Troopers), his lifelong obsession is with Jesus Christ. You never know: is it a comedy or a drama? Is it kitsch on purpose? Is she telling the truth? Is she crazy?” “Paul would give me a specific direction, like, ‘You’re doing this because you’re in love with her.’ He would turn around, then come back and say, ‘Or maybe not.’ Which, for me, makes sense. Patakia, a 29-year-old Greek actor who grew up in Belgium, was also the star of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Nimic, so she’s used to ambiguous auteurs. Yet on a separate Zoom call from Paris, Patakia tells me, “When I met Paul, I asked if we were going to do rehearsals, and he said, ‘You know what to do.’ I was like, ‘Wow. It’s a thorny relationship that unfolds like a game of strip chess. I injected a contemporary element into the film.”Īt the convent, Benedetta feuds, flirts, then eventually frolics in bed with Sister Bartolomea, a rebellious nun played by Daphne Patakia.
I think the tone is reflected in why he chose me for this role. “I love the exaggeration Paul uses in his filmmaking. While UK viewers probably missed France’s version of The X Factor, Efira’s background emerges in Benedetta’s declarative outbursts. However, Efira’s 20s were spent as a French-speaking Claudia Winkleman, hosting reality shows such as Nouvelle Star. Since 2016, Efira’s received five César nominations, the latest one for Benedetta, and she speaks to me during the shoot for Rodeo, one of her many upcoming features. Is it just to lock the door and make love? Or is it something more transcendent than that?”Įfira, 44, to UK cinephiles, is a skilled, auteur-friendly Belgian actor known for An Impossible Love, Sibyl, and having a whole episode of Call My Agent! dedicated to her. “If you read about the real Benedetta, it’s implied she was mentally ill,” Efira tells me, via an interpreter, over Zoom, lounging on a sofa in Brittany. The latter occurs with Benedetta surrendering her body to higher powers, which raises a question: when Benedetta moans and groans, her eyes rolling to the back of her head, is she actually faking it?
Inspired by a real 17th-century figure, Benedetta Carlini causes a scandal by having a lesbian relationship and claiming to communicate with God.
The inscrutability lends itself to Efira’s spectacular turn as the titular nun of Verhoeven’s latest feature, Benedetta. In Elle, Efira depicts a rapist’s wife, a character who’s seemingly oblivious until she reveals at the end she knew her husband’s crimes all along. “He implied I wasn’t elegant in real life.” “Paul said he didn’t recognise me because I was so elegant in Elle,” Efira recalls, laughing. More crucially, Verhoeven had shot Efira earlier that year in his revenge-thriller Elle.
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By that point, Efira was already well-known in French and Belgian cinema, having gained fame previously as a TV presenter. When Paul Verhoeven bumped into Virginie Efira in late 2015, he didn’t know who she was.
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