Relaxed, witty and fresh off another globe-spanning theater tour, Isabelle Huppert was already slipping back into Cannes mode when we met at Paris’ iconic Lutetia Hotel ahead of the world premiere of Asghar Farhadi’s “Parallel Tales” in competition.
In the Paris-set movie, Huppert stars alongside a powerful cast including Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney, Adam Bessa, India Hair and even Catherine Deneuve. In “Parallel Tales,” Huppert plays a writer in dire need of inspiration for her new novel. She resorts to spying on her neighbors across the street but when a young homeless man (Bessi) gets hired to help her with her daily routine, her reclusive life is turned upside until the fiction she had imagined surpasses the reality of them all.
During a wide-ranging interview, Huppert reflected on the pleasures of mystery in cinema, admitting that when she first read Farhadi’s script, “I thought I didn’t understand everything — and that’s exactly why I wanted to do it even more.” She described the Oscar-winning Iranian auteur as “a true craftsman — an orfèvre, a goldsmith,” recalling his obsession with the smallest details and compared her solitary writer character to “a witch, a kind of demiurge.”
Cannes veteran Huppert has starred in more than 20 films that have played in competition, and won twice, for Claude Chabrol’s “Violette Nozière” and Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher,” and served as president of the jury in 2009.
The Oscar-nominated star, who’s been juggling a vibrant career in film and theater for decades, had just returned from Shanghai, where she received a Magnolia award — the Chinese equivalent of a Tony — for her play “The Cherry Orchard,” directed by Tiago Rodrigues.
A testament to her wide range, in the last 12 months Huppert has starred as a billionaire heiress in Thierry Kliffa’s “The Richest Woman in the World,” which played at Cannes and as a glamorous vampire in Ulrike Ottinger’s Vienna-set “The Blood Countess.”
Despite long being embraced by Hollywood, Huppert has remained largely outside the English-speaking entertainment world. She will, however, make her first film in England opposite Bessa in Yann Demange’s London-set crime thriller “Lineage.”
How did you come to be involved in “Parallel Tales”?
In the most natural way possible. It was Asghar himself who told Alexandre Mallet-Guy, the producer, that he wanted me. He says in the press kit that he had thought of me from the very beginning for the role, which is very flattering. It wasn’t complicated at all — Alexandre simply contacted me.
How familiar were you with Asghar Farhadi’s work beforehand?
I knew his cinema, but shortly before this I had finally seen one of his films that has since become one of my favorites, “A Hero.” I had missed it when it came out, but I think it’s wonderful. Most of his films are, really.
What did you think of the script when you read it? Had you seen the Krzysztof Kieślowski films that inspired the project?
I didn’t have a very precise memory of it, I admit. I remembered “A Short Film About Killing” well, because I was president of the first European Film Awards back in the 1990s, and we gave him the Grand Prix for that film. But “A Short Film About Love” — I honestly didn’t remember it at all. I haven’t rewatched it since, either. My character in our film is quite different. The film comes from a broader proposal — the Decalogue concept that was offered to Asghar. So while it’s clearly inspired by “A Short Film About Love,” it goes in quite a different direction. I didn’t feel the need to revisit it.
And what was your reaction to the script itself?
I thought I didn’t understand everything — and that’s exactly why I wanted to do it even more. I told myself: it’s by making the film that I’ll come to understand it. And ultimately, when you make a film, you don’t necessarily need to understand it. That’s not what moves you forward. As we shot, things became clearer. I could see I was watching people through my telescope, after all. The film turned out to be very strong because it’s actually very clear and simple to follow in the end. But reading the script, the interweaving of my scenes with the other characters in the apartment — the real story and the false one — wasn’t always easy to follow. I thought it was natural that at the writing stage it would convey complexity.
It’s about the duality of the characters, isn’t it? Your relationship with Adam Bessa’s character is difficult to define.
Exactly. And the relationship with Adam took on its full substance during shooting. It’s a relationship of initiation into writing, an apprenticeship in life through her — and at the same time, a relationship that’s both maternal and conflicted. Not all of that was as explicit on the page. What you sense in the film is that the writing is devoid of psychology and yet there’s something — her solitude, her way of living, almost like she lives in a cave, withdrawn — that doesn’t get spelled out in the script but is immediately embodied on screen. People want to push her out of the apartment, and she decides she’ll stay. That all came through clearly.
Did the apartment itself help you build the character?
What I found enormously inspiring when I arrived on set was the décor itself. I’ve rarely been so inspired by a set. It was the work of Emmanuelle Duplay, the production designer. The profusion of books was extraordinary.
I’d never seen so many books in my life.
Me neither. Walls of old books. I’ve sometimes been inspired by sublime landscapes, of course, but this was something else. The apartment was a reproduction of one where we’d done the screen tests but couldn’t ultimately use, for various production reasons. So it was rebuilt entirely in studio. You’d never know. It was wild.
When you shoot in a studio like that, it’s not easy to keep your imagination going for the staging. It reminds me — and this has nothing to do with anything — of Claude Chabrol on “Violette Nozière.” We were shooting in a tiny apartment in the 15th arrondissement, deliberately small to convey the cramped conditions Violette lived in with her parents. Claude used to joke: “It’s not hard to find where to put the camera, because there’s only one possible spot.” I never forgot that. It was a clever way of describing what staging is — sometimes it’s the necessity imposed by the space itself.
Asghar Farhadi seems very meticulous in his approach.
Yes, he’s a true craftsman — an orfèvre, a goldsmith. I don’t know why I associate those two words, “goldsmith” and “Iranian.” There’s a delicacy in the works that come from that country that brings them together. Even at the costume preparation stage, he was extremely meticulous — the smallest details: the color of a bracelet, the number of bracelets.
I had just seen you in “The Richest Woman in the World” and the contrast between the two characters — especially in terms of style — is striking. Did you bring anything from your own wardrobe or accessories on this set?
All the little charms, the jewelry — he chose all of it. None of it is “me,” really. There’s never anything of yourself in a costume, but here it went a bit further. In this character, she doesn’t dress for just anyone she might cross in the street, except when she goes to see her editor, played by Catherine Deneuve. Then she dresses in a more urban, conventional way. But at home, I thought of her almost like a witch, a kind of demiurge. I found it an interesting proposal. I didn’t push back on it at all. And on set, that same attention to detail extended to his direction — placing a strand of hair on the face just so. Tiny things. I found it touching, a kind of delicacy, like a painter. He wanted it to match the vision he had.
How did your character Sylvie come across on the page?
It was written in a way that didn’t pose any problem for me, because it wasn’t psychological at all. There was no description of particular emotions. The writing was quite dry, quite informative, but it took on its full reality on screen. The whole psychological dimension of the character is told through the décor, through the staging. Immediately you see a solitary character among all those books, in an apartment that’s mostly messy and not well-kept. That tells you everything about her state of voluntary solitude and the way she lives. Nothing more needed to be added.
Did you help Asghar write your character’s dialogue, since French isn’t his native language?
No, not at all. I didn’t intervene in the writing. The dialogue was very well translated. Did I change things? It happens. It doesn’t bother me, and it doesn’t bother directors. An actor knows very well what’s sayable, what feels natural. What matters most to me isn’t delivering “dialogue.” It’s just speaking like a normal person. I have a fairly trained ear for any word that wouldn’t make a sentence flow. But honestly, I don’t think I changed much.
Asghar worked with Massoumeh Lahidji. Did that create a particular dynamic on set?
Yes, with the wonderful Massoumeh, an extraordinary person, with this gentleness and intelligence everyone knows. I’d never worked with her on set before, but I’d seen her many times at festivals. She was there most of the time. That said, Asghar’s English is getting better and better. He doesn’t speak French, but his English is quite good. It was very meticulous work. You can tell he’s someone who thinks a lot.
Your character spends much of the film observing other people.
What was interesting was playing someone in the inverse position of mine as an actress. By definition, I’m looked at: I’m an actress. And here I’m playing someone who’s looked at while she’s looking. It’s like an inversion of my situation. But ultimately, there are only two shots through the telescope, let’s not exaggerate. But it’s strong enough that the character is seen continuously through that prism — someone who’s always watching. That’s the power of cinema. I’m not at the telescope for two hours straight, but two or three times is enough to envisage her, and that word is interesting, because to envisage is to see a face — to envisage this character as someone permanently looking.
So you wouldn’t describe her as a voyeur?
She is a kind of spy. And innocent spy though. Her gaze creates a tension. It brings things to the surface. The tension is very well managed in the film. Moving from looking to spying, you enter another fantasy register — espionage belongs to the detective film. It’s as if every life is an enigma. You move through these perceptions that build the film’s whole attention.
The scene with Catherine Deneuve is wonderful because it suddenly shifts the film again. It’s where you really grasp who Sylvie is.
That scene is great. What you wonder, above all, is where fiction ends and reality begins. She reads that passage, and Catherine — playing the editor so wonderfully — tells her she doesn’t like it at all. We don’t even know anymore if the story about the father is true. And then she decides to throw everything out and get rid of all her books.
What did that gesture of getting rid of all the books evoke for you?
I did it without trying to figure out exactly what it evoked, while being fully aware it was a very strong gesture. A kind of rebirth. A gesture both unexplained and inexplicable, and at the same time — who hasn’t dreamed of wiping the slate clean? Why do we feel so good arriving in a hotel room? Because everything is empty, there’s no past. There’s that idea of renewing yourself in a space untouched by the past. The good thing about the film is that everyone can interpret it for themselves. There’s no explanation, no psychology — and that’s what’s interesting.
The film tackles big themes: the relationship to children, family, inheritance and motherhood. Did that appeal to you?
Yes, but the strength of the film is that it evokes all of that without ever spelling it out or expounding on these subjects. It’s given to you immediately, in a slightly mysterious way. We’re also in something extremely prosaic, extremely trivial, and we’re simultaneously in transcendence and sad reality.
Even though you’re very different from the character, were there aspects of her you connected with personally, perhaps in the idea of transmission with Adam’s character?
Maybe transmission, yes, but not teaching. I have nothing to teach Adam Bessa or India Hair. Truly, that’s not what’s at stake. We’re not in a learning dynamic. That would imply I hold some knowledge or power. That’s not how it works on a set. Everyone holds knowledge and its opposite at once. No one knows more than the other.
It’s an ensemble film, and yet many of the characters seem to exist in parallel worlds.
Yes, I don’t really have exchanges with most of the cast, apart from the scene with Vincent, which I love. That’s the scene where I say: “What’s that called? It’s called imagination.” I love that line. There’s also a short scene with Virginie. But apart from those, I don’t share scenes with the others besides India and Adam. It’s like two parallel worlds.
The metro scene where you’re having a cigarette must have been fun to play.
Yes, what I liked is that there’s not only the apartment scenes, there are quite a few other situations. I also like when I arrive at the bar after the confrontation with Catherine. There are lots of little moments like that. That’s the magic of cinema — the obviousness of showing someone in a setting, in a situation, that tells you something. Without telling you anything explicit, it tells you something. The film is very strong at that.
It’s also one of several films by major international directors being shot in French this year, alongside Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden” and Laszlo Nemes’ “Moulin.”
True. It’s always different when a foreign director comes to shoot in France with French actors. It produces something different.
Do you think France and French actors have become particularly attractive to foreign filmmakers? Is France becoming the new Hollywood?
Between what gets said and what actually happens, there’s a gap. It’s certainly a way of saying how loved French cinema is, and rightly so. But in reality, I don’t see it. Hollywood remains Hollywood — though American cinema isn’t only Hollywood. There’s the New York indie scene, lots of independent films. But all the better if French actors attract Americans.
What changed for you after “Elle” and the extraordinary response the film received in the United States?
Not much, because it never does. It just gives a lot of enjoyment. It really was a great adventure, not a walk-in-the park for sure. The film was on a knife’s edge and ended up being so well received in the U.S. — quite unexpected. And the relationship with Paul Verhoeven, an extraordinary director. Crossing paths once in my life; I don’t know if it’ll happen again. Although I would love to!
You’ve worked in so many countries, but not so much in the Anglo-Saxon world despite your popularity and the fact that you’re fluent.
I’m happy with whatever I did in the U.S. : Michael Cimino, Curtis Hanson, David O’Russell, Joaquin Trier [Norwegian but shot in the U.S.] and Ira Sachs [shot in Portugal]. My next film will be in England, and with Adam, actually. It’ll be both in French and English. I’ve shot in practically every country in Europe — Hungary, Poland, Italy, Germany, a number of European countries — but never in England. Although I’ve done lot in theater, in English, in the United States and in the U.K.
What about television? You were brilliant in that episode of “Call My Agent!” and it’s become near cult internationally.
It’s true, sometimes I get recognized for “Call My Agent!” “Oh my God, Call My Agent!”
Would something like “The White Lotus” appeal to you?
I would have loved that. It’s a really interesting recent series. I discovered Spanish “Querer,” which I thought was remarkable, when I was in Madrid to perform “Bérénice.” Series are often choral, you’ll see a character in one episode and not again for three. That can be frustrating. But here, from what I’ve seen, you follow the characters all the way through. Also I saw the remarkable “The Diary of Etty Hillesum,” by Hagai Levi, the Israeli director of “In Therapy.”
How proactive are you in meeting filmmakers you want to work with?
Sometimes happens… you summon the unexpected, the poetry of life, which makes you meet people or not meet them. People can meet through screens, too. There are a thousand ways directors enter your life. You can’t reduce it to: “I call someone and say, hey, I’d like to work with you.”
You were just in Shanghai?
I was in Shanghai to receive an award, a Magnolia — a kind of Chinese equivalent of the Molières or a Tony award, to put it quickly — for “The Cherry Orchard.” We’d toured “The Cherry Orchard” across China for a month last year. I’m doing a lot of touring with my plays right now. I was in Madrid and Porto for “Bérénice,” and before that in Australia, in Adelaide, for Bob Wilson’s “Mary Said What She Said” and in Beijing before for the “Glass Menagerie.”
I’m touring those two productions all over the world right now. It sounds adventurous on paper, and it is in the sense that the venues are far. It’s wonderful because the audiences really love theater.
Theater is rewarding.
In that way, yes. Anyway, it’s rewarding to be on a stage, regardless of receiving Magnolias.
You also get to truly know international audiences in a way that others don’t.
People don’t realize how much of theater travels. Not every production tours like mine do, but it’s not a total exception either. Tiago Rodrigues’ productions tour in many places. There’s a whole life around the world for French-language productions, subtitled, that travel. It’s a reality of theater that people aren’t fully aware of. People always ask me: “Do you perform in English?” Well, I’m certainly not performing in Chinese — it’s subtitled, like opera. That’s part of the reality of theatrical life abroad.
You seem endlessly curious about cinema, literature, theater…
Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily affect the choices I make afterward. I’m a good spectator, a good reader. Where the gaze takes you or the ear… Sight and sound. To return to Asghar’s film, that’s what’s so interesting: it summons both sight and sound, in the construction of fiction. When you listen to music, you’re not looking at anything, but you’re listening — you build worlds, you travel through unknown territories via sound. That’s a fascinating dimension of the film.
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