Isabelle Huppert told reporters at the Thessaloniki Film Festival on Monday that she was prone to making bold artistic choices, saying: “I don’t have the courage to take risks.”
“It wasn’t a risk to work with all the people I’ve worked with before. It was very safe,” Huppert said. “I don’t take any risks working with Paul Verhoeven or Michael Haneke. I don’t take any risks[with them]no matter what the role is.”
Attending the prestigious Hellenic Festival to pay a career-spanning tribute and receive the prestigious Golden Alexander Award, the Oscar nominee and two-time César Award winner revealed why she is drawn to characters full of “ambiguity and complexity,” as she performed in unforgettable films such as Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, which won her the Cannes Jury Prize, and Verhoeven’s Elle, which earned her a nomination. Academy Award.
Huppert downplayed the challenges of playing more complex roles over the years, praising his many artistic collaborators and insisting that “it’s never difficult to work with people like this.”
“The challenge can be working with people you don’t really understand or trust,” she says. “What’s really important is trust. That’s the key word in the relationship between actor and director and the movie. If you don’t rely on trust, it’s very difficult to do that.”
The Thessaloniki Festival will screen 15 films from Huppert’s oeuvre this week. These include Claire Denis’ postcolonial drama “The White Materials,” Marc Fitussi’s comedy “Copacabana,” in which the French screen icon co-stars with his daughter Lolita Chammar, and Thierry Chrifat’s political drama “The Richest Woman in the World,” which premiered at Cannes this year.
Thessaloniki also screened this week Heaven’s Gate, the sequel to The Deer Hunter directed by five-time Academy Award winner Michael Cimino, in which Huppert appeared in an early role. The actress noted that the controversial Western, which was a notorious flop when it was released in 1980, is now receiving a belated review from critics, calling it “a part of the history of filmmaking, and part of the history of art in general.”
“The film is now as famous for its failures as it is for its successes, but the successes came over the years. When the film was first released, it was a real disaster — ‘an unqualified disaster,'” Huppert said. “Of course, that didn’t encourage people to watch it. And in a way, I think Michael Cimino never really got over that failure, because it was a failure.”
“Over the years, every time I watched this movie, I realized to some degree that it was really a so-called auteur movie. It was very personal. It wasn’t. I cared about the audience, but… there was nothing that would make this movie more[accessible]to the general public,” she continued. “And I think the political content was probably hard to hear back then. And I think this movie would be even more interesting if it came out now. It would probably be more acceptable now.”
Looking back on her career, the actress expressed few regrets about her acting choices, but joked, “I would have loved to have worked with Alfred Hitchcock, but he was already dead by the time I started acting.”
“We forget[our role]very, very easily,” she says. “Maybe I’m being very disloyal to the movie and the role. The minute you do it, it’s forgotten. Of course I care about the movie being loved and liked and accepted, but in terms of how to preserve it, there’s not enough space to preserve all that.”
Appearing in conversation with Thessaloniki’s head of programming Yorgos Krassakopoulos, the French screen star fielded questions about women’s checkered progress in European cinema (“We still need to improve”), the Gaza war (“There’s always not enough noise about any suffering in the world”), and whether she and the film industry have changed since the beginning of her prolific career.
“I don’t think anything has changed between when I started and now. I think I’ve always had the same curiosity,” she said. “What has probably changed is the way movies are shown, that’s for sure. There are many ways to watch movies, but of course the best way, and the one that should remain, is here, in the theater, on the big screen. Any other way is not the best way for me.”
Huppert has made his fair share of bold, provocative and unpredictable choices throughout his remarkable career, but the 72-year-old insists his work is not done yet: “I’m always looking for the unknown.”
“I think any time you start something, it’s like jumping into the unknown,” she said. “This is what I always look for. And usually I find it.”
Thessaloniki Film Festival runs from October 30th to November 9th.
