OfEnrico Caiano
The actress, protagonist of «Gospel according to Mary»: «I like Pope Francis very much, I am sure that my peers adore him too». And on his partner Scamarcio: «We manage to organize our ages in a nice and fun way for both of us. I would like children”
D to a rich Roman teenager who ends up in prostitution – just 5 and a half years ago in Baby – to Virgin Mary. Power of fiction. And the power of a girl-actress who is demonstrating real talentcredible as she is both in the tight clothes of a Pariolina lolita and in the large and rough tunics of the girl from Nazareth from two millennia ago, chosen to bring the son of God into the world.
Benedetta Porcaroli is not yet 26 years old, she will be in a month, but he has just added the most complete and most difficult one to his series of roles. A rebellious Madonna, different from traditional iconography, almost a feminist ante litteram (even if Barbara Alberti will specify in the following pages that she is not exactly like that; ed). Yet Benedetta feels that way: «she is. As is Barbara and the entire film by Paolo Zucca.” But then, like the author, even without knowing that she did it, she slows down a little: «Let’s say that I like to deal with human characters in my work and I’m not crazy about the rhetoric of the male versus female game. But it is clear that the book and the film talk about effort that women have made to obtain fundamental, very important rights. We are faced with a metaphor, a parable that shows what happens when a woman has a child that she does not want, when she finds herself faced with a destiny that she could not choose. It’s a level of suffering which, without taking anything away from men, concerns only women.”
«WITH RICCARDO WE ARE ABLE TO ORGANIZE
OUR DIFFERENT AGES
IN A NICE AND FUN WAY
FOR BOTH”
Benedetta discovered the book, written twenty years before she was born, when she was called to shoot the film. But above all he discovered Barbara Alberti: «I fell in love. She is a person with a scary amount of energy, at 80 years old he is still a little girl. And then… a capacity for elocution, to speak at an incredible speed, saying things that were perhaps there in my head but all confused. And she managed to line them up for me, to give them an order.” Let’s go back there, then: who knows if feminism is also among those ideas of Barbara’s that Benedetta “felt” she had with her. And what kind of feminism, in these years. “On one side I regret not being born in Barbara’s years, when people took to the streets if they had to conquer something. I am also a person who has the need and desire to make my voice heard. On the other hand, however, I know that I live in the era of social media, where there is the illusion that everyone has their own independent megaphone just because they are on Instagram.” A Generation Z girl with a bit of an allergy to social media is not a common thing: “I’ve seen too many times that they are exploited, bent over,” she confesses. «I don’t think that expressing my dissent there will have a real impact, a real usefulness. It’s as if the fact that everyone can talk ultimately leads to the result that no one talks. So I developed a form of modesty, I became constipated in my demonstrations on Instagram.” A problem that you add to the excesses that you find in today’s feminism: «I don’t like the direction it’s taken, this feeling that it’s men who have to apologize for existing regardless… Honestly, it’s not part of my culture, it’s not how I’m used to interacting with the opposite sex.”
Get excited, Benedetta: «I witness certain debates by people who define themselves as feminists where there is a hatred towards men that I don’t know if it will lead to something useful. It seems to me that we are throwing fuel on the fire and creating non-existent problems. Who said that women’s battle must be to become equal to men? We are different, with different roles and do different things. But do you think we have to become obsessive and that if a man offers you dinner there is patriarchy? No, I say thank you and next time I’ll buy dinner.” Crossing the i’s, this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t get along well with his generation Z peers: «I really want to understand where my generation is. And even if contact is not frequent due to work, I have friends my age. I think they are a fairly smart generation, less manipulable in many aspects than what is thought. They have quite precise ideas. Of course, however, we grew up in the era of social media, which is normal for us. And if I say let’s take to the streets to protest, they look at me as if they were saying “you’re crazy”. Social media has had the function of calming the people, the indignation is much more filtered than in the past, it is an end in itself and does not bring you before the ministry. In the end we young people are alone, I’m becoming convinced that we need a youth party. We need to understand that technology doesn’t reach everywhere, it doesn’t replace everything. The sooner we internalize it, the sooner we will come up with alternative solutions.”
From feminism to rebellion, to religion, another theme of her latest film: «I grew up in one quite catholic family», (it’s no coincidence that her name is Benedetta…), «especially the grandmothers. For example, no swear word has ever been uttered inside the house. But it’s not that we are practitioners. I believe that Jesus Christ was a very important historical figure. However, I cannot define myself as an atheist either: I believe in God, perhaps not in classical religious terms, I believe in a God as spiritual energy. As a claustrophobic, the idea of the end is difficult for me to conceive. Imagining that when one dies this journey ends is something not very poetic and very not reassuring.” If you look closely, though. Benedetta Porcaroli believes above all in the «duty of knowledge», as the Madonna says in her film: « I feel very ignorant However, I am a curious person and I try to absorb as much information as possible. For me then, not taking doubt into account is impossible and this almost prevents me from believing the things I think: a part of me believes that a point of view escapes me, that I don’t have enough elements to see things in a certain way. I feel big but also very small, with many boxes still to be explored to have a definitive opinion on things. Which in itself is something very complicated.”
The other strong theme of the film, it goes without saying, is motherhood. And Benedetta, the almost 26 year old, the Roman of generation Z – surprise! – she’ll take care of it. She is: «she I am fascinated by the idea, I find it a psychedelic experience to become a mother. I think having a child makes life more complete, she is able to get rid of many things that waste energy and time.” As for when, however, she becomes more staid: «It’s something that for now I can only experience as a transference of the moment, but I know that I like children a lot. And yet… can I reveal something?”. You’re welcome… «I have almost only met people in my life – and I meet many – who tell me “Please don’t have children, think about your career”. There is this sort of terrorism in today’s world that I honestly regret a little. I feel the terror ofhorror vacui after the children. Instead I know many people who have had many children at a very young age. I don’t know if I’m ready but I feel like it’s something that’s part of me. When it happens and if it happens it is beyond my control.” It comes naturally to ask yourself if she would like it to happen with the man who is her current partner, Riccardo Scamarcio, an actor like her, almost 20 years older than her: «I would like», she jokes, «for it to happen with the man who I love, as my Maria says, not at the hand of a God. For me, children are a direct consequence of love, so I hope that it happens where this feeling commands. In the trailer of my life as a mother with the children I have always imagined, it is like this.”
«I AM THE DAUGHTER OF SEPARATED PARENTS,
IT HAPPENED TO ME AT 9 YEARS OLD: A TRAUMA
SINCE THEN I FEEL IN ME
THAT I MISSED MY DAD FIGURE”
His dream, he doesn’t hesitate to say, is that «after having children we stay together. I am the daughter of separated parents and therefore I dream of a family that stays together». Yes, the separation, that day when she was 9 years old when everything changed. “A trauma,” she reflects. «I had grown up with my father and suddenly he left the home scene. Since then, at every moment, I feel inside me that I have missed the figure of my father. Now I can acknowledge it with maturity, I have a wonderful relationship with my family, we all get along. But as a child, no.” Children are also those who die in Gaza and Benedetta experiences with discomfort the war that has tormented those places since last October: «I’m very sick, I say it without rhetoric, straight away, from the gut. It’s an offense to the whole world. And it is equally offensive for all my fellow citizens to live in a country, Italy, that does not take a humane position on the matter.” This is also why he considers his private life as a refuge from the ugliness of the world: «I put my private life at the center, yes. I realize that things are bad and I hope that things can take a better shape.” If, like his Mary, if he could make a gesture of rebellion it would make the cell phones explode. We must start again from human contact, from looking each other in the eyes.” It seems like we hear Pope Francis speaking: «Madonna, how I like this Pope! Good thing it exists! He is the only person who says what he told you. As a tiny town in this darkest moment that can’t get any darker, I see a light in the Pope. In my generation I have never heard dissonant voices on this.”
There are several generations that separate her from her partner, but she doesn’t see it as a problem: «I’m used to it, I’ve been working since I was little and therefore I manage to make this somewhat drastic transition from having stability with adults to having it with my peers. I have always moved in these two bands. I grew up with my parents’ friends and the adult world has always fascinated me. I’m 25 years old but also have a stable job and he’s still, so to speak,… a boy. We manage to organize our ages in a nice and fun way for both of us».
May 10, 2024 (modified May 10, 2024 | 09:52)
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