VIDEO. Benjamin Lavernhe embodies Abbé Pierre at the cinema

“I have a great pride and an immense honor to have to try to carry on his legacy”. In director Frédéric Tellier’s latest film, actor Benjamin Lavernhe plays Abbé Pierre in a film that traces the battles of his life. A role that the actor says he is proud to have played, at a time when poor housing still concerns our society.

“We must never get used to the misery that jumps out at us”

Through his role, Benjamin Lavernhe raises awareness of the struggles of this figure of charity. “What Abbé Pierre teaches us is that we must never get used to the misery that glares at us in the street. That’s what’s the most difficult, because we’re overwhelmed by bad news and we tend to protect ourselves by telling ourselves that we can’t do anything about it, that it’s human nature that people suffer ” But explains to him that you should never get used to it. For the actor, Abbé Pierre is a resistance fighter who did not believe in fate and who instead devoted his life to building and meditating. Endowed with hypersensitivity and hyperempathy for the suffering of the other, the personality traits of this emblematic character were, according to the actor, his engine but also his “Achilles’ heel”, being sometimes “overwhelmed by his emotions”.

If Benjamin Lavernhe chose to embody this character, it is also thanks to the scenario which completely seduced him. “We don’t just say ‘yes’ to a biopic or a character, but also to a point of view, how Frédéric Tellier, the director, looked at L’abbé Pierre. And the sensitivity of his writing, the fact of having a very intimate gateway to the complex, tormented personality, contrary to the hagiography of the Abbé Pierre myth, the fact of meeting this gentleman through the prism of intimacy fascinated me, overwhelmed me”, confides Benjamin Lavernhe.