Over four decades, the actress Isabelle Huppert has dedicated herself to portraying human perversions with more dedication than any other.
It represents the ambiguity, complexity and richness of nuances of French cinema. Strong and fragile at the same time, the versatility of actress Isabelle Huppert (Paris, 1963), one of the legends of world cinema, continues to overwhelm us. Indeed, throughout a career spanning more than four decades, Huppert has dedicated himself to portraying human pathology, perversity and sociopathy with more dedication than any other colleague.
One of her most recent performances joins her long list of women who make us cringe. "The Widow", a recent addition to our screenings, is a film that marks the return of the Irish director Neil Jordan, and in which the French actress is a lonely piano teacher who is revealed to be a fierce stalker, the cause of nightmares. the snowy Chloë Grace Moretz. The psychological thriller gives Huppert a new opportunity to imbue her character with just the right amount of goodness and madness. Let's be clear: her best characters are, in short, consummate psychopaths: aggressive, selfish, false women, with cold lucidity and incapable of feeling remorse.
Perhaps that is why the artist became the fetish actress of another genius in perversions: the master Claude Chabrol. In a quick review of her brilliant collaborations, one cannot overlook "A Women's Affair" (1988), a film based on the true story of Marie-Louise Giraud. In an occupied society, when French men were scarce and the German militia proliferated, prostitution multiplied among the youngest and unwanted pregnancies were frequent.
In the character of Marie de ella, Huppert presents us with a woman who finds in homemade abortion practices a means of subsistence and, incidentally, of assistance to her fellow citizens. Her actions are totally outside of ethical considerations, therefore superfluous in a world of hunger and need.
But if we talk about suffocating psychological depth, perhaps "The Ceremony" (1995) is the best of the seven films that the actress starred in under Chabrol. Based on the novel "A Judgment in Stone" by Ruth Rendell, Huppert stars as Jeanne, a post office clerk, who befriends an illiterate and dyslexic domestic worker. The growing resentment of both against her hypocritical bourgeois bosses triggers a mournful response. After the millennium, the recurring diva of the Cannes festival has offered us characters of sublime perversion: In "The Pianist" (2001) by Michael Haneke, Huppert's character is a conservatory professor who develops paraphilias that threaten her own integrity, and who does not hesitate to mutilate his skin to obtain pleasure.
But it is in "Elle" (2016), the film by the unclassifiable Paul Verhoeven, the film in which the actress sets the highest bar by playing Michele, the despotic manager of a powerful video game company, whose life changes radically when A masked man enters her house and rapes her. Instead of filing a complaint, she will calmly tidy up the dining room where she was subjected, take a shower, and even order sushi for dinner. Thus, the character rebels to assume the role of victim. She moves on with her life, while she plans her wicked revenge. A story that moves away from any gender convention, stereotype or political correctness.
"Loulou" By Maurice Pialat (1980)
S-x and vitality: Huppert is a well-to-do wife who falls in love with a ruffian (Gérard Depardieu). She leaves her bourgeois life behind and financially supports her lover.
"A Woman's Affair" by Claude Chabrol (1989)
In World War II, women raped by soldiers or prostitutes turn to Marie Latour. Terrible story of one of the last women guillotined in France.
"The Ceremony" by Claude Chabrol (1995)
A postal worker establishes a lesbian relationship with the illiterate maid of a bourgeois family. Together, they organize a plan to assassinate their employers.
"She" by Paul Verhoeven (2016)
Huppert plays a raped woman who, instead of calmly calling on authority, starts a perverse game of cat and mouse against her attacker.
