Sévérine

Silva's doomed accomplice in Skyfall.

Sévérine is a character in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, played by Bérénice Marlohe, a former sex slave working for the villain Raoul Silva who helps Bond and is murdered by her boss.

Quick Facts

Portrayed by: Bérénice Marlohe
Series: James Bond
First: Skyfall (2012)
Gender: Female
Affiliation: Raoul Silva
Occupation: Raoul Silva's representative, Sex slave (former)

Facts from the source article.

Background

Bond first sees her in Shanghai, where she positions an art dealer at a window for the mercenary Patrice to shoot; after Patrice falls to his death the two exchange a glance and Bond takes a casino token meant as Patrice's payment. She greets him at the Macau casino, and over a drink he reads her wrist tattoo as the mark of the Macau sex trade and deduces that Silva took her in under the guise of rescue. Promising to help her escape and to kill Silva, he asks her to arrange a meeting; she warns him that her guards intend to throw him into a pit with komodo dragons and tells him to find her yacht, the Chimera, if he survives.

They have sex aboard, and as they approach Silva's island she tells him it is not too late to retreat. Taken prisoner, she is beaten for her betrayal and bound to a statue with a shot glass of Scotch on her head for Silva's game of William Tell; Bond misses, and Silva shoots her in the head.

Marlohe contacted director Sam Mendes through Facebook and won the part after two auditions. She cited Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye as her favorite Bond girl and said she was inspired by Famke Janssen for her approach to Sévérine, and was also intrigued by Grace Jones's performance as May Day; outside the Bond series she found inspiration for the character's psychological instability in Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. She built the performance around the mythological chimera and argued for dropping the title Bond girl in favour of a real human being.

Costume designer Jany Temime combined film noir designs with contemporary fashion to keep a sense of mystery around the character. The backless evening gown Sévérine wears when she first meets Bond was created from black satin decorated with 60,000 Swarovski crystals, based on Rita Hayworth's black dress from Gilda, and took six months to complete; six versions of the body of the dress were made and Marlohe was sewn back into it twice a day.

Critics saw her early promotion as a return to the classic mysterious Bond woman, but many panned Bond's seduction of a former sex slave and his cold response to her death, while some defended the arc as appropriate to his development.