Isabelle Huppert in Sidonie in Japan (2023)
While on a book tour in Japan, Sidonie Perceval, still haunted by the ghost of her late husband, begins an affair with her mysterious Japanese publisher.
You have two sure bets when Huppert is in a film: (1) she will take off her shirt; (2) she will not smile. She did disappoint the bettors here, despite being 70 years old now. At some point soon the nudity may come to a close, but don’t expect any smiles because her face seems to be totally frozen in place. She makes Nancy Pelosi seem as animated as Roger Rabbit.
One cannot accuse Huppert of sloth. At an age when many people retire to write memoirs and go fishing, she is still starring in several more of her despairing, hand-wringing films every year.
I haven’t assembled a complete Huppert nudography yet because I am daunted by the magnitude of the task. She has worked for every French director since the Lumiere Brothers, and has been naked in more than two dozen films, possibly as many as three dozen.
Isabelle Huppert is part of the hall of fame for nudity in cinema, she could only be French
If you’ve got it. Flaunt it. She’s been doing nude scenes since the 70s. Keep it going Isabelle.
Heaven’s Gate is a great movie. Flawed but great.
Zut alors, Scoop may not be a fan of her acting but is there any other actress with a half century nude career? Her first was Going Places (1974)
I make jokes about Huppert, but she’s a great actress. Over the years her range has narrowed, partially because she has mastered the cold, austere persona, and partially because that’s how casting directors and audiences see her. If you look at her youthful performances, there was exuberance, joy, sweetness, even naivete in a wide range of characters.
Actors tend to become what filmmakers and audiences want them to be. Samuel L Jackson is a terrific actor, but people don’t want to see him doing The Caveman’s Valentine. People want to see the cocky, righteous, foul-mouthed, always-in-control, street-savvy character that they associate with him. So he does that. Audiences love it. He gets rich. Win-win.
Similarly, people are not lining up to see the next lowbrow comedy with Isabelle Huppert.
But setting that aside, an actor with only one character type can be just as good as a chameleon. Acting is about credibility, not variety. A performance always hangs on whether the actor is believable in the role. Nobody ever said Huppert wasn’t convincing in those roles.
Sure, we love to see performers like Christian Bale who look and seem totally different in every role, or like Streep with her perfectly mastered dialects, but how many of those do we need? I’ve heard some people argue that one Christian Bale is one more than we need.