Isabelle Huppert on the Emotional Power of Cinema
Filmmaking is a collective assemblage of desires,” said Isabelle Huppert when we sat down to talk on a recent morning. We were speaking about how she picks her roles, and how her own intuition about a part is shaped by the people involved in its production. And for the incomparable French actress, who’s appeared in well over a hundred films and has spent the past four decades honing her ferocious talent, it’s a subject she’s spent a long time exploring. She’s embodied complex women for many of cinema’s greatest artists, and her name has become synonymous with a certain kind of intensity and on-screen vigor.
In just the first ten years of her career, Huppert worked with a stunning lineup of directors—from Otto Preminger and Joseph Losey to Jean-Luc Godard and Bertrand Tavernier—and she swiftly established herself as one of the most fascinating actors of her generation. In the decades since, her work with such filmmakers as Claude Chabrol, Maurice Pialat, Michael Haneke, Claire Denis, and Catherine Breillant has made her an icon. Now sixty-two, Huppert remains as prolific and mesmerizing as ever; already this year she’s starred in Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come, Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, and Guillaume Nicloux’s Valley of Love, which had its U.S. premiere last Thursday at this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Valley of Love reunites Huppert with fellow French legend Gérard Depardieu—thirty-five years after they shared the screen in Pialat’s visceral drama Loulou—to tell the story of two former lovers who come together in Death Valley to mourn the death of their son. Whether they’re navigating the desert landmarks of the West or reclining beside the pool of their nondescript tourist motel, the two deliver beautifully nuanced performances with a rapport that keenly suggests the unspoken history between them. On the morning after the film’s premiere, I spoke with Huppert about her about the emotional extremity of her characters, her relationship with filmmakers, and the instinctual nature of her acting approach.