Isabelle Huppert shared the spotlight, and Berlin’s 2002 red carpet, with five of the stars of 8 Women, François Ozon’s camp take on an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery.
Huppert’s turn as the singing, dancing spinster aunt Augustine — a rare comedic performance — was a scene-stealer. Berlin audiences lapped it up. The cast won a special Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution, and 8 Women became the year’s sleeper hit, earning more than $42 million worldwide.
Huppert has been a Berlinale regular ever since, with starring turns in the 2012 competition title Captive, from Brillante Mendoza, playing a hostage who survives a year’s captivity in the Philippine jungle; in Mia Hansen-Love’s Things to Come (2016), as a philosophy teacher battling through a slew of midlife crises, including the death of her mother, the loss of her job and an unfaithful husband; and as a no-nonsense prostitute who becomes the obsessive object of a younger man’s desire (he was played by the late Gaspard Ulliel) in Benoît Jacquot’s Eva (2018).
A two-time winner of the best actress honors in Cannes (for Claude Chabrol’s Violette in 1978 and 2001’s The Piano Teacher, directed by Michael Haneke) and Venice (1988’s Story of Women and 1995’s La Cérémonie, both once again directed by Chabrol), Huppert will finally get her due in Berlin this year, where she’ll receive a Golden Bear for lifetime achievement. In addition to 8 Women, Things to Come, La Cérémonie and The Piano Teacher, Berlin’s seven-film homage of her work includes her first leading role, at age 24, in Claude Goretta’s The Lacemaker (1977), her turn in Jean-Luc Godard’s Every Man for Himself (1980) and Huppert’s Oscar-nominated performance in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016), in which she plays a rape survivor who refuses to be a victim.
The workaholic star is also bringing along a new film: the French drama About Joan, directed by Laurent Larivière and co starring Swann Arlaud and Lars Eidinger, which will screen out of competition in Berlin.
She’ll also have a chance to reconnect with 8 Women director Ozon, whose latest, Peter von Kant, opened the 2022 Berlinale on
Thursday.
Source: Hollywood
