English text
Interview by Olivier Joyard, portraits by Sofia Sanchez and Mauro
Mongiello
and that’s enough to colour the im-
age. In the movies, it doesn’t take
much for disbelief to be suspended
and for the imagination to take over.
A couple of times I asked myself what
difference it made if my character was
an actress, but I understood it later:
it means that people see the film
through that particular prism.Are your films self-portraits?
Antonioni said that every film is auto-
biographical, and it’s probably just as
true for an actress as for a director,
but unconsciously I think. There’s al-
ways a form of self-portrait in my
roles, even if nobody would ever
know anything about my life from
looking at the films I make. It remains
hidden behind a mask; somewhere
there is a truth that is hiding. There’s
something unconscious at work
which makes its mark on the film, like
a trace that is discovered later.
Something gets left behind without
our knowing it, if you believe that cin-
ema has that particular power.Frankie is one of those films that
takes the time to let stigmata and
feelings make their mark.
Pascal Greggory and I were talking
about this recently. We often had the
impression of doing nothing, a sort of
degree zero of acting. And that’s
where cinema comes in with all its
power, the power to capture a being
rather than to make one. What gets
captured is not something we can
really control, we’re not entirely re-
sponsible for that. And that’s where
the strength of a film lies.backdrop of Sintra, in Portugal, re-
sulting in a collusion between the very
private, intimate aspect of what hap-
pens between the characters and
their confrontation with their sur-
roundings, which mirrors their interior
torment. It was rather a nice idea to
shoot in Portugal, a bit of a neutral
territory which brought us all together,
from both France and the U.S.When you accept a role, what is it
you look for? Travel and seeking
other horizons seem to have
guided your recent choices.
The principle motive is cinema. It so
happens that the last two films of
mine that came out involved travelling
[prior to Frankie, Huppert played the
title role in Neil Jordan’s Greta], but
it’s merely a coincidence. I’d already
met Ira Sachs a while back. I liked his
films, in particular Love Is Strange
and Brooklyn Village. In the end he
wrote this story specially for me.You are an actress and nothing
but an actress, by which I mean
you’ve never wanted to direct. But
nonetheless your artistic involve-
ment in your films goes well
beyond what is usually expected
of an actor.
Maybe it’s a role I like to take on, a
space I occupy. In Frankie, in particu-
lar, it somehow feels double because
my character is an actress. But if you
look closely at the film, not that much
is made of this fact. The panoply of
mythology associated with actresses
isn’t deployed – you don’t see me
“being an actress.” It’s simply stated,NUMÉRO: The plotline for Frankie
follows a famous actress on her
holidays, telling the story, through
an accumulation of impressionist
touches, of a woman who is dying
from an incurable illness...
ISABELLE HUPPERT: Yes, that’s
right. The film unfurls inexorably
around a major event, but it isn’t
revealed to the viewer in a dramatic
way. A woman is going to die. And
this softness is precisely what reveals
the pain and its brutality. There are far
more spectacular films out there than
Frankie, but that takes nothing away
from its scope. So yes, it’s an intimist
film as they say, but Ira Sachs chose
to shoot it against the magnificentPortrait
ISABELLE HUPPERT: FIRE AND ICE
How many movie stars’ filmographies can be said to recount the story
of cinema over the past 40 years, from Otto Preminger and Jean-Luc
Godard to Maurice Pialat, André Téchiné, Benoît Jacquot, Serge Bozon,
Hong Sang-soo and Claire Denis? In an age of streaming and series,
Claude Chabrol’s favourite actress embodies an eternal and perennial
idea of the seventh art. In her latest movie, Frankie, filmed by American
director Ira Sachs, she plays the role of a dying actress who spends her
final weeks seeking peace on the Portuguese coast. Without overdoing
it, Huppert plays with her own image, all the while seeming to detach
herself from it, a characteristic blurring of the boundaries that makes
each of her performances utterly captivating. Numéro talked to her about
the shoot, her career and her intimate feelings about cinema.