The Films of Isabelle Huppert: Part 1
Fresh-faced Ingenue (1971-1977)
Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that my favourite actor in the world is the great Isabelle Huppert, and after I met her in 2016 and told her this, nobody I have met has ever been denied the tiresome details of the story. Born the youngest of five in March of 1953 to a middle-class Parisian family, she graduated to great success from France’s national dramatic academy, the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique, and began working almost immediately, debuting in television movies before, at the age of nineteen, scoring a role with her first major auteur director Claude Sautet. The underplayed intensity and impressive lack of self-consciousness that would come to define her later triumphs was on display from her first appearances on camera, but her major breakthrough as a leading lady came towards the end of the decade. At the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, an event with which Huppert has since been inextricably linked, Claude Goretta debuted his his gentle tragic drama The Lacemaker, and Huppert’s role as a young woman whose head is turned by an unfaithful lover made her a star.
Le Prussien (TV Movie, 1971)
Faustine et le Bel Ete (1972)
Qui Etes-Vous Monsieur Renaudot (TV Movie, 1972)
Le Bar de la Fourche (1972)
Figaro-ci, Figaro-La (TV Movie, 1972)
César and Rosalie
César Et Rosalie
Claude Sautet, 1972
Rating: BBB
Cast: Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, Sami Frey, Bernard Le Coq, Eva Maria Meineke, Henri-Jacques Huet, Isabelle Huppert, Gisela Hahn, Betty Beckers, Hervé Sand, Jacques Dhéry, Pippo Merisi, Carlo Nell, Dimitri Petricenko
Sautet’s intimate drama revolves around the stormy relationship between a beautiful, recent divorcee (Romy Schneider) and her passionate, possessive new boyfriend (Yves Montand). When an old flame of hers shows up, she seeks comfort in him after fighting with Montand, leading to a whole series of confrontations that see her bouncing back and forth between the two men. The plot sags a little in the middle, but the performances are strong and nobody does subtlety like Sautet. One of the film’s greatest pleasures is seeing an eighteen year-old Huppert in one of her first major films, absolutely adorable as a member of the family that watches these relationships go down in flames.
Le Maitre de Pension (TV Movie, 1973)
Le Drakkar (TV Movie, 1973)
Vogue la Galere (TV Movie, 1973)
Histoire Vraie (TV Movie, 1973)
Madame Baptiste (TV Movie, 1974)
Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974)
Going Places
Les Valseuses
Bertrand Blier, 1974
Rating: BB
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Miou-Miou, Patrick Dewaere, Brigitte Fossey, Dominique Davray, Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Rispal, Jeanne Moreau, Sylvie Joly, Gérard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte, Christian Alers, Michel Peyrelon, Gérard Boucaron, Jacques Chailleux, Eva Damien, Marco Perrin, Claude Vergnes, Michel Pilorgé
This cinematic exercise in youthful debauchery is both fascinating and frustrating. Gerard Depardieu (in one of his earliest film performances) and best pal Patrick Dewaere roam around France by various means, stealing from stores and attacking innocent women before Dewaere receives a very uncomfortable shot to the testicle and is crippled for the rest of their journey. This doesn’t hinder their zest for crime, however, and they continue until an encounter with an older ex-convict (Jeanne Moreau) awakens them to their own sense of mor(t)ality. Huppert has a tiny role at the conclusion of this unmotivated comedy, one of her first to earn her recognition from audiences, as a young woman who plays one last chance at a joyful threesome for our hapless heroes. Blier’s films are always sharp observations of masculine failures disguised as bacchanalian romps, and he intelligently laces the boys’ reindeer games with a sense of casual guilt that is poignant, but his plot doesn’t have momentum. Miou-Miou, later to be Huppert’s co-star in Entre Nous, stars as a passive shampoo girl who doesn’t seem to mind bearing the brunt of the leads’ worst behaviour, even when it becomes dangerous for her to stay with them.
Plaies et Bosses (TV Movie, 1974)
L’Ampelopede (1974)
Aloïse
Liliane de Kermadec, 1975
Rating: BB.5
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Delphine Seyrig, Marc Eyraud, Michael Lonsdale, Valérie Schoeller, Monique Lejeune, Julien Guiomar, Roger Blin, Jacques Debary, Nita Klein, Hans Verner, Alice Reichen, François Chatelet, Fernand Guiot
A biography of artist Aloise Corbaz, who was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and, while institutionalized, began creating drawings that were eventually studied as part of the Outsider Art movement. de Kermadec emphasizes a deep sense of sympathy for the character and the acting (including a very young Huppert in her first film to play in the Cannes competition) is terrific, but the dull pace eventually makes the subject feel remote.
Dupont Lajoie (1975)
Le Grand Delire (1975)
Serieux Comme Le Plaisir (1975)
Rosebud
Otto Preminger, 1975
Rating: BB.5
Cast: Peter O’Toole, Richard Attenborough, Cliff Gorman, Claude Dauphin, John Lindsay, Peter Lawford, Raf Vallone, Adrienne Corri, Isabelle Huppert, Brigitte Ariel, Lalla Ward, Kim Cattrall, Debra Berger, Mark Burns, Amidou, Klaus Löwitsch, Yosef Shiloach, Françoise Brion, Maria Machado, Serge Marquand, Jean Martin
The daughters of a group of wealthy men are kidnapped off a Mediterranean yacht and held hostage by the PLO, prompting a British agent working for the CIA to try and rescue them before there is an international incident. Preminger makes something of a follow-up to Exodus with this tale of the eternal conflict in the Middle East, a number of sequences are impressive for their quiet efficiency but it never gets exciting or absorbing. Huppert, as one of the kidnap victims, has the biggest role among the young women, who also include a nineteen year-old Kim Cattrall as co-star.
Docteur Francoise Gailland (1976)
Le Petit Marcel (1976)
Je Suis Pierre Rivere (1976)
The Judge and the Assassin
Le Juge et l’assassin
Bertrand Tavernier, 1976
Rating: BBBB
Cast: Philippe Noiret, Michel Galabru, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Claude Brialy, Renée Faure, Cécile Vassort, Jean-Roger Caussimon, Jean Bretonnière, Daniel Russo
A soldier is released from the army, his psychological scars unexamined, takes a wife and shoots her dead almost as quickly as he coerces her into wedlock. From there he wanders the countryside raping and murdering shepherds both male and female before finally being apprehended and brought to trial. The judge assigned to his case (Philippe Noiret) now has to decide the fate of a man whose sentencing depends on whether or not he is deemed insane. As a judicial matter it has a great effect on Noiret’s future career, while the accused is made a symbol of late nineteenth-century French social justice considering the hard knocks his life endured before he snapped and became a vicious killer. Lots of intelligent philosophizing that, thanks to Tavernier’s exquisite direction, never feels dry or self-important. Huppert appears in an early role as Noiret’s mistress.
Les Indiens sont Encore Loin (1977)
On ne Badine Pas Avec L’Amour (TV Movie, 1977)
Des Enfants Gates (1977)
The Lacemaker
La Dentellière
Claude Goretta, 1977
Rating: BBB.5
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Yves Beneyton, Florence Giorgetti, Annemarie Düringer, Renate Schroeter, Monique Chaumette, Jean Obé, Christian Baltauss, Sabine Azéma
Huppert had her first lead role with this powerful drama, and she displays the phenomenal sensitivity that would mark her career in the years to come. She plays a young, inexperienced beauty salon employee who goes on a seaside vacation with her reckless, recently single girlfriend. There, she meets a sweet university student of bourgeois origins who falls in love with her and they set up together as soon as they return to Paris. Class differences are unavoidable, however, and the trouble that generates as their social differences take hold have a devastating effect on our heroine’s emotions. Beautifully photographed and directed with marvelous delicacy, this is the origin story of one of the greatest careers in cinema history and one that is a must-see for her fans.