“It’s not blood, it’s red.” – Jean-Luc Godard discussing a scene from Pierrot le fou with Cahiers du Cinéma reporters after its release in 1965.
Acting, for Isabelle Huppert, is an occupation.
Once the cameras are off she goes out of character and becomes herself again. There is method to what she does but the experience is not all-consuming. The French actress doesn’t take the job home with her.
Film director Michael Haneke, who has worked with her on two films, (The Piano Teacher and Amour) says “(Huppert) has such professionalism, the way she is able to represent suffering. At one end you have the extreme of her suffering and then you have her icy intellectualism. No other actor can combine the two.”
That dichotomy is evident throughout Huppert’s entire body of work. At 63 she has been working in film, TV and theatre since she was a teenager. The Golden Globe for Best Actress she won for her performance in Elle is just the latest in a long string of awards she has received over the years. Earlier this week her acting job was also nominated for an Oscar – only the 14th Best Actress Oscar nominee ever for a foreign language performance.
The first films Elle’s director Paul Verhoeven made in his native Holland had an aggressive style more often associated with Hollywood than European art cinema. He then worked on several blockbusters stateside (RoboCop, Basic Instinct) that further established his reputation as an in-your-face filmmaker.
After his stint in the U.S. Verhoeven returned to Europe where he has continued to make films. Even though he seems completely unsuited as a collaborator for the incredibly nuanced and subtle Huppert just the opposite proves to be true. The two veterans work extremely well together on Elle creating one of Huppert’s most enigmatic characters in a career chock-full of them.
Working with a lot of directors Huppert has become a master of adapting to different styles. She once compared Michael Haneke’s approach as a combination of Robert Bresson’s asceticism and Alfred Hitchcock’s perverse mind games. In Elle, Verhoeven mixes bourgeois melodrama with a film noir sensibility like Claude Chabrol referencing the pulp fictions of old Hollywood.
On some levels her character, Michèle Leblanc, has similarities with Bogart’s Dixon Steele in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place. They are both human paradoxes with no shut-off valves. Slowing down or changing course are not options. It’s always full steam ahead.
In 2017, Huppert has already got six films on the go, either made or in pre-production, including a new one, Happy End, with Haneke.
Off the Cuff:
Oscar countdown. Isabelle Huppert (Elle) joins six colleagues for The Hollywood Reporter’s Actress 2017 Oscars Roundtable including Taraji P. Henson (Hidden Figures), Annette Bening (20th Century Woman), Natalie Portman (Jackie), Naomie Harris (Moonlight), Emma Stone (La La Land), and Amy Adams (Arrival, Nocturnal Animals): bit.ly/2jVNFeA
In conversation with . . . Isabelle Huppert (TIFF 2016):
bit.ly/2iDQ24C
Golden Globes 2017
backstage interview:
bit.ly/2jvX4fY
Elle press conference,
New York Film Festival:
bit.ly/2iyaN6T
Rendez-Vous with
French Cinema:
bit.ly/2iDSb06
Elle trailer:
http://bit.ly/2iKYsKR
Charlie Rose interviews Isabelle Huppert:
bit.ly/2kajyDE
DP/30 Oral History of Hollywood: Isabelle Huppert
http://bit.ly/2iy3fAL
C’est quoi Isabelle Huppert ? - Blow up - ARTE:
http://bit.ly/2k1FUrz
IndieWire: Why ‘Elle’ Star Isabelle Huppert Is the Actress Whose Oscar Time Has Come: bit.ly/2g2cumA
Isabelle Huppert on
Jean-Luc Godard:
http://bit.ly/1vtfRu3
Let’s talk about
Pierrot: An interview
with Jean-Luc Godard:
bit.ly/2iKZeaJ
Cinema=Godard=Cinema
“When you see your own photo, do you say you’re a fiction?”: bit.ly/2iL2bbv
