Just let Isabelle
Huppert's bored eight-year-old
wander into an interview about her play 4.48
psychoses, writes Simon
Houpt
[...] She is about to expand on this
thought when her eight-year-old son Angelo,
a curly-blond-haired cherub in a smart blue dress shirt, mopes into
the room and addresses her loudly, taking no notice that she is deep
in conversation.
He arrived yesterday at the beginning
of a 10-day school break from Paris and is already bored. She tries
to ignore him, but eventually gets up and escorts him back to the
care of his nanny in another room, reminding him of her professional
obligations and the exciting activities she has planned for him.
She pads back in, but a moment later he follows, sullenly plopping
himself down at the next table with his back to her and toggling
away on a hand-held electronic game while trying to attract her attention.
She takes this in stride and continues to articulate her approach
to acting, betraying no sense of social disruption from Angelo's
presence. As he needles her with cries of, "Maman! Maman!" like
any dissatisfied eight-year-old, Huppert tries
to explain that she is "very far and very close" when she
acts. (more)
Pour Isabelle
Huppert, ce surtitrage «avec
parcimonie» change la perception du public. «Dès
lors qu'on l'envisage comme ça, dans sa musicalité,
dans son sens au-delà du sens, cela devient tout à fait
acceptable, comme on recevrait une musique ou un tableau. On accepte
l'absence d'explication, on reçoit le spectacle de manière
plus souterraine, sensorielle. Quand je vois un spectacle en langue étrangère,
je ne suis pas arrimée aux surtitres, j'aime aussi me laisser
prendre par autre chose. Ceci étant dit, ici ça ne
plaît pas à tout le monde et ça me gêne
un peu.»
L'actrice dit vivre ses expériences américaines comme
des sortes de déracinements temporaires qui l'obligent à «sortir» d'elle-même.
Elle souhaite continuer à tourner aux Etats-Unis mais n'a
jamais envisagé une carrière américaine. Ce
rythme, environ un film tous les sept ans, lui convient. «J'ai
toujours essayé de trouver un juste milieu : ne pas renoncer à soi-même
et être pris par une chose assez puissante qui vous sort de
vous-même. J'y suis allée à chaque fois que je
sentais qu'il pouvait y avoir un partage équitable entre moi
et eux, finalement. Sinon, quel intérêt ?» (by
Laurent Mauriac for Liberation)
"I'm
not a very clear and direct person; I'm
indirect," she says. "I don't attack
things head-on. I like to portray women who resist, who have conflicts to resolve,
and these are things that make for beautiful movies."
Energy is not the key. "I don't have that much
energy actually. I act more through absence than presence, in hollow spots. And
there's no film that I find difficult; it's harder for me not to make a movie
than to make one.
"Sometimes, perhaps, I feel used, but that's
part of the project and of what I do. We give a lot of ourselves, our bodies."
When Godard's 1980 "Sauve
qui peut (la vie)" (Every Man for
Himself) was released in New York, Huppert was
raked over the coals by Pauline Kael in
The New Yorker: "Though her pale freckled face and her light-reddish hair
make her seem fragile at the top, she's sturdy from the waist down, and [Godard]
gets a lot of action out of her round, plump, adolescent-looking bottom. It's
licked, spanked, and violated; there are times when you could swear that it pouts
as eloquently as her face."
"She was tough," Huppert says. "'Sauve
qui peut' was perfect, but I don't think I could make the same movie with
Godard today. It was a time in my career when I behaved a certain way with my
directors, and since, I've moved on ... perhaps more than he has." (more)
Thé d'après-midi. Jardin
caché. Disponibilité. Comme ceux qui travaillent beaucoup
et ne lâcheraient pour rien au monde le fil quotidien de leur
vie personnelle, Isabelle Huppert sait
trouver le temps... Entre le cours d'escrime de son benjamin et l'entrée
dans une grande école de théâtre de sa fille
aînée, on la retrouve, loin du fracas de la ville, dans
un hôtel un peu secret qui pourrait être londonien. Elle
est simple et amicale. Elle ne se surveille pas. Elle est vraie.
Elle n'a pas besoin de jouer les stars. Elle l'est. (read
more)
La Mostra de Venise vient de la consacrer
pour sa contribution internationale au cinéma, à l'histoire
du cinéma. Gabrielle,
le nouveau film de Patrice Chéreau dont
elle partage la vedette avec Pascal
Greggory, séduit le public comme il a séduit
la critique. A partir d'après-demain, commencent à Los
Angeles les premières représentations de 4.48
Psychose de Sarah Kane,
début d'une longue tournée internationale qui sera
marquée à New York par une rétrospective de
ses films, des expositions de photographies. Le livre qui paraît
le 14 octobre au Seuil, est également
publié aux Etats-Unis, en Italie, en Espagne, en Allemagne,
en Grande-Bretagne. Pas loin de Harry
Potter, Huppert!
"The
state she was in normally wouldn't have permitted her to write
a play," says Huppert in
a low voice, nasal and hoarse from a late-summer cold. Dressed
in jeans and a white puff-sleeved blouse, her auburnish hair pulled
back into a ponytail, she looks puny sunk back into a wine-colored
love seat. "What's incredible is
her lucidity right through to the end -- which allowed her at once
to be above it all, because she was going to die, and at the same
time to use what she was experiencing to create a work of art."
Kane left
instructions forbidding her works to be produced in any other form
but on a theater stage -- no video cameras, not even for rehearsal,
meaning that Huppert will never
see her own performance.
"It's
a real shame," she says. "I wanted
to have a trace of myself in this show. But philosophically, I
can understand it -- the idea that the theater is destined to stay
only in the memory, to exist in a more interior form." (more)
This year
you turned in 50 years old. Was it a difficult birthday?
I’ve a small child and so I find myself doing the same things I used to
do when I was twenty. I’ve the same thoughts the same problems. It must
be the reason why I don’t feel the weight of my age.
Did the
frequentation of a director very concerned with music like Chéreau convinced
you to direct yourself an opera? You just accepted to direct the
Gluck’s “Iphigenia
in Tauride” in June at the
Opera Garnier. Gérard Mortier proposed
it to me. I don’t even know which part of myself said yes,
and it’s a bit this curiosity that made me go for it: learn
which part of myself I will express. Maybe it’s a crazy
thing. That would be my very first
experience in directing. I
won’t ask for help because I think that directing means
becoming an adult. I don’t know if I feel like becoming
an adult though. Maybe yes. I like the idea of being forced to
it. But just for a little bit of time. (more)
Isabelle
Huppert and Nicolas Ghesquière. She is
one of the greatest film actors working today. He is one of fashion’s
fiercest, most fascinating talents. When Isabelle
Huppert and Nicolas
Ghesquière meet, the results are honest, insightful and ultimately
beguiling. The conversation starts here.
It’s a typically French conceit
that the most talented artists are also the most elusive. In the
case of Nicolas Ghesquière and Isabelle
Huppert, however,
this may well be true. Two uniquely modern talents, both have a strong
will for subversion set against a clear reverence for tradition and
history. And both are notoriously mysterious. (more)
What would
you say to young actors?
Giving advice is very difficult and I don’t feel like I’m a good
adviser…So I would tell them that acting, this is very musical. Take the
same work and listen to it in 10 different ways: song, piano, and maybe violin
too. Take for example a Mozart Concerto
and listen to it played by Richter or even Glenn
Gould… This reveals a lot about the interpretation and the game.
I always liked to compare the various works… (more)
Do some characters
can weaken an actor?
Of course, theatre is tougher than the cinema. At the cinema, you’re
more detached; you act and do many other things at the same time whereas at
the theatre, the more the rehearsal are moving forward, the more the feeling
of anxiousness is getting bigger…(laughs) (more)
This site does not have any affinities to Isabelle Huppert
officials
Every word written and
complied here is simply from the souls of her honest fans, and their fantasies
on this respectful and great actress in the world.
Interview 
Portrait 
Tournage 
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