Isabelle huppert

I admit it. If they tell me on a Saturday night that we have a “great plan”, the projection of an Isabelle Huppert film, a shudder runs through my body, and not with emotion. The fault lies not with the excellent work of the actress, but with the films that she usually chooses to play, which present certain common features of a leaden atmosphere, with existentially empty bourgeois characters, sometimes trapped by tremendous perversions.

Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert was born on March 16, 1953 in Paris, France, although she spent her childhood in Ville-d’Avray. She was the youngest of five siblings. She is of Hungarian ancestry, and her mother, an English teacher, encouraged her, as well as her sister Elisabeth, to develop acting qualities that she immediately detected in her. So she enrolled at the Versailles Conservatoire, where she already won an early prize for the performance of Alfred de Musset ‘s “Un caprice” . From there she would go on to the prestigious National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris. Among the roles that she embodied on stage, under the orders of Antonio Vitez and Robert Hossein , that of Euripides’ Medea stands out.

In 1971, she made her television debut, and the following year on film, with a minimal role in Faustine et le bel été . More interesting was doing Ella, yo y el otro with Claude Sautet , also in 1972 . There she met Yves Montand and Romy Schneider , and immediately Huppert was going to start rubbing shoulders with the best of French actors. As in Los rompepelotas ( Bertrand Blier , 1974), where Gérard Depardieu and Jeanne Moreau were also present . A first and early recognition came to him with The Judge and the Assassin ( Bertrand Tavernier, 1976), where she was considered revelation of the year. Also, she was nominated for a César for the first time for Aloïse (Liliane de Kermadec). Huppert is the most nominated actress in the history of French awards, twelve times, although she has only won the award once, late, for The Ceremony (1995).

The truth is that the redheaded actress, with a great presence on the screen, has been blessed with many awards. She can boast of being the actress with the most films selected for the competitive section of the Cannes Film Festival, and twice she was recognized as best performer, for Prostitute by Day, Miss by Night (Claude Chabrol, 1978) and The Pianist ( Michael Haneke , 2001 ). ). At the Venice Festival, she also won two prizes, for Asunto de mujeres (1988) and The Ceremony , both directed by Claude Chabrol , the director with whom she has worked the most, seven feature films together, no less. One of them, Madame Bovary (1991), based on the work ofGustave Flaubert , gave him an award at the Moscow Festival.

Married to Ronald Chammah since 1981, he has directed her in what, curiously, is her only film, Milan noir (1988). Both have had three children, of which Lolita ChammahShe has followed in her mother’s artistic footsteps. Motherhood has not been a hindrance to Huppert’s career, but rather a stimulus, since the truth is that throughout the 40 years that she has been working on the screen, she has been in more than a hundred films, she has never been missing a piece of paper to throw away. Many times he has incarnated unpleasant characters, who seem distant from his family life. On this he has commented: “I do not try to sympathize with my characters. I try to empathize with them. I try to understand them. If I sympathized with the characters, I would idealize them, I would make them romantic, something they are not. So I don’t idealize them. I make them normal, not very cute, just the way they are.”

He has almost always shot in French with compatriot actors, but he has also shot in English Rosebud ( Otto Preminger , 1975), Michael Cimino ‘s cursed film Heaven’s Gate (1979), False Witness ( Curtis Hanson , 1987), Amateur ( Hal Hartley , 1994) and Strange Coincidences ( David O. Russell, 2004). As can be seen, none of these American titles conquered the box office, but Huppert did not choose just any filmmaker. She has always been very select when it comes to agreeing to work with someone, or perhaps there have been many directors with pedigrees who would slap each other in the face to have her in her films. Some of those we have not yet mentioned are Maurice Pialat – Loulou (1980)-, Joseph Losey – La truite (1982)-, Jean-Luc Gordard – Passion (1982) and Hail whoever can, life (1980)-, Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani – Elective affinities (1996)-, Raoul Ruiz –The comedy of innocence (2000)-, François Ozon – 8 women (2002)-…

Huppert has given life to Anne Brönte in The Brönte Sisters (André Techiné, 1979) and to a scientific celebrity in The Merits of Madame Curie ( Claude Pinoteau , 1997). And just as she shoots in Australia- Cactus ( Paul Cox , 1986)- than in Cameroon – A woman in Africa ( Claire Denis , 2009)-. She is an all-rounder actress par excellence, she confesses that she refused to do Funny Games for Michael Haneke because of how unhealthy her proposal seemed to her, but regretting later she plunged into another even more extreme film, The Pianist ; she would still repeat with Haneke in The time of the wolf (2003), and she is currently preparing with him Amour. Another filmmaker not suitable for all stomachs, Brillante Mendoza , has signed her for Captured .