La Ceremonie: Isabelle Huppert

I just might have to start my own Isabelle Huppert fan club. Not long ago I was raving about her performance in Comedy of Power.

Once again working with Claude Chabrol and a story from Ruth Rendell, Huppert plays second fiddle but just barely to Sandrine Bonnaire (and if you want to discuss film in terms of bad haircuts, Sandrine’s zombie do would warrant a mention; the picture you see above is much more flattering than her cut in the film). Sandrine plays Sophie, an illiterate woman with an enigmatic past who is hired as a maid by a well to do family (Jacqueline Bisset as the mother). The father (Jean-Pierre Cassell) hates the local postwoman (Jeanne) played by Huppert and is sure she is opening his mail. The rest of the family consists of a young son and a late teen or twentyish daughter.

I don’t want to give too much away as it is a thriller with quite the ending but let’s just say that a friendship develops between Sophie and Jeanne, which at first seems just the meeting of odd and asocial minds but then forms into something a little worrisome.

Though everything in this film works, what really stands out in the film is Huppert’s performance. It is so utterly different than her take in Comedy of Power -in that she was the personification of a calm and strong yet empathetic woman and in this she is a twitchy brazen and soulless creature.

I don’t believe the picture above comes from this film but it is appropriate in the ever present cigarette. In these French films, everyone is smoking like its going out of style (and I guess it is). There is a scene where the mother offers her son a cigarette as they watch a movie together (he is anywhere between 14 and 16), and they sit there happily smoking and watching the movie. You would not be able to get away with this scene in an American or British film these days and that’s too bad. It makes for an interesting scene and illustrates the nature of the relationship between the two (cigarettes come into play between the two on another occasion as well).

At any rate, another great Huppert performance and I have now officially embarked on my Huppert pilgrimage.