‘I NEVER FELT I WAS BEING PROVOCATIVE… NOT FOR THE SAKE OF IT.’
Admittedly, hers is a strange career when it comes to English-language movies. After working in France in the 1970s - notably on The Lacemaker, which won her a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer - Isabelle Huppert’s first notable American film appearance was in Michael Cimino’s epic western disaster Heaven’s Gate. Since then, English outings have been sporadic, often skewing to the more quirky end of the indie universe, such as Hal Hartley’s Amateur, David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees or, more recently, Neil Jordan’s psycho-thriller Greta.
When she finally won her first and only Oscar nomination in 2017, for Paul Verhoeven’s brilliantly twisted Frenchlanguage rape-revenge story Elle, the host for the evening, Jimmy Kimmel, made a telling gag in his opening monologue: “On behalf of everyone here, we didn’t see Elle but we absolutely loved it.” If it was a joke at the expense of those in the room who rarely watch subtitled movies, it summed up Huppert. Always the Hollywood outsider, always will be.
Whatever her reputation over the pond, the 70-year-old star remains a titan of world cinema. She’s twice won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, for Claude Chabrol’s Violette Nozière (1978) and Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001); and twice won the same prize in Venice for two more Chabrol films, Story of Women (1988) and La Cérémonie (1995). At the César Awards - France’s Oscars - she has been nominated a staggering 16 times, and won twice, for La Cérémonie and Verhoeven’s Elle.
Curiously, Huppert’s new film La Syndicaliste navigates similar terrain to Elle. ‘[It’s] a little bit cold… what happened to her,’ she explains with characteristic understatement, talking about her real-life character Maureen Kearney. Irish-born union official Kearney worked for the French energy company Areva and was targeted after she exposed a secret deal the company was planning with China. It led to threats and a brutal attack and rape in her home.
Shockingly, as the film unfolds, doubts surround her story - plunging the viewer into a fascinating deep-dive into a world where women who report sexual abuse are frequently ignored. Helmed by Jean-Paul Salomé - it’s a typically incendiary and incisive work from Huppert. But what would you expect? Thriving on challenging material that most would blanch at, she stands on high - the ultimate risk-taker.
