JULIETTE BINOCHE
‘FOR ME, ACTING... IT’S MY LIFE. THAT’S MY COMMITMENT TO WHY I CAME HERE, ON EARTH.’
The French call her ‘La Binoche’. Though maybe ‘Binoche The Brave’ might be better. Since her arrival in the mid-’80s, the raven-haired Parisian has gone where angels – or at least other actors – fear to tread. Few other performers would endure, for example, the torturous three-year production of 1991’s The Lovers On The Bridge, which saw her almost drown in one scene. Fewer still would perform the legendary ‘fuckbox’ scene in Claire Denis’ wildly off-kilter sci-fi High Life, where she got her rocks off on a moving dildo.
Then there are all those performances for arthouse auteurs, like Hou Hsiaohsien (Flight Of The Red Balloon), Michael Haneke (Code Unknown, Caché) and Abbas Kiarostami (Shirin, Certified Copy). This isn’t coincidence, but a concerted effort from Binoche to seek out the best in world cinema, to find new experiences around the globe. “I’m lucky now that I can go to the directors I admire,” she says, “and ask them, ‘Would you consider making a film together, in France or somewhere else?’”
It’s mid-January when Total Film meets Binoche over Zoom during the annual UniFrance gathering to promote the year’s Gallic cinematic offerings. She’s sporting a white blouse and red trouser suit, looking impossibly younger than her 57 years. Relaxed, giggly and full of beans, her sentences may occasionally veer towards the florid, but the reality is, she’s been kept grounded by being a mother for most of her career (she has two children, son Raphael, 28, and daughter Hana, 22).
Unlike some of her compatriots, Binoche has remained open to English-language experiences – whether it was early breakthroughs like The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and Damage or Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, the film that won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (and endeared her to the world as she laughed, “This is a dream... it must be a French dream,” to the watching millions). There have been blockbusters too – Godzilla and Ghost In The Shell – although you suspect she sees Hollywood as her own private laboratory in which to experiment.
Her latest film takes her back to is adapted from the bestselling non-fiction account by Florence Aubenas, a journalist who went undercover as a cleaner to explore the world of minimum-wage workers and the often-desperate conditions they endure. Binoche, whose character name has been changed to Marianne Winckler, is surrounded by non-professionals in the film, but effortlessly blends in, as her character discovers what life on the margins is really like.
