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focus on isabelle huppert

Isabelle Huppert © Peter Lindbergh

Cool, intense and hypnotic, France's most daring contemporary actress is celebrated in a retrospective charting an iconic screen career.

Fri 29 June - Tue 10 July 2007

Full $13 Concession $10 
Six Session Pass: Full $60 Concession $48


Curated by Roberta Ciabarra. Read the program notes.

Presented in association with the Sofitel French Rendez-vous 2007, with the generous support of the Alliance Française and the Embassy of France.

Acknowledgments/Remerciements:
Jean-Jacques Garnier, Ambassade de France en Australie, Edouard Mornaud & Francoise Libotte, Alliance Francaise de Melbourne, Becker Entertainment, Bureau du film francais (Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres), Dendy Films, Gaumont, Gemini Films, Illumination Films, Janus-Action Films, Level Four Films, Madman Cinema, MK2, National Film and Sound Archive, Pathe Renn, Potential Films, Sharmill Films, StudioCanal, Twentieth Century Fox, UGC International.

ma mère (my mother) Honore's provocative film is based on the novel by Georges Bataille.

la dentellière (the lacemaker) Huppert garnered a Best Newcomer BAFTA for this breakout role, early (and prescient) intimation of a great talent in the making.

sauve qui peut (la vie) (slow motion) Three disparate souls cross paths in Godard's wry yet beguilingly lyrical rumination on the notion of selling oneself.

loulou Nelly (Huppert) is married to a hapless advertising exec whose attempts to rein her in only deepen her resolve to skulk away with gadabout, Loulou.

coup de foudre (aka entre nous) Based on an autobiographical novel by director Diane Kurys, the film re-teams Huppert with the under-rated Marchand, her co-star in Loulou.

cactus Huppert travelled to Australia to take up the role of Colo, a Frenchwoman in exile from a stifling marriage.

la séparation (the separation) Huppert gives nuanced expression to the uncertainties and compulsions of a woman who suffers (and inflicts suffering) by her own hand.

merci pour le chocolat (nightcap) In his seventh on-screen collaboration with Huppert, Chabrol explores the nature of perversity, good and evil within the domain of family.

une affaire des femmes (story of women) The Venice Film Festival awarded Huppert the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her role in this film.

madame bovary Huppert's Emma Bovary is at once coquettish, exasperating, pitiless and ultimately deeply affecting.

le temps du loup (time of the wolf) A sudden act of violence ruptures every moral certitude Anne (Huppert) and her two children have taken for granted in their middle class lives.

amateur Huppert approached self-confessed Godard aficionado, Hal Hartley, who jumped at the chance to cast her in one of his deadpan, absurdist films.

la pianiste (the piano teacher) Huppert gives an audacious performance as a respected piano teacher whose intellectual rigour masks a predilection for destructive sexual compulsions.

i heart huckabees Albert Markovski (Marie Antoinette) is an acutely angst-ridden environmental activist railing against corporate greed.

michael cimino's heaven's gate Cimino's monumentally staged western screens as the restored 225 minute director's cut in glorious Panavision.

saint-cyr Mazuy's lavishly staged drama takes its title from a boarding school founded in the seventeenth century by Louis the XIV's mistress.

8 femmes (8 women) Huppert is cast as prim horn-rimmed spinster Augustine, but holds her own in the glamour stakes before the film's denouement.

la vie promise (the promised life) Huppert is a streetwalker, plying her trade in Nice. Her teenage daughter ditches foster care, determined to restore a bond with her mother.

la cérémonie (the ceremony) For her fifth screen collaboration with Claude Chabrol, The Venice Film Festival awarded Huppert the Volpi Cup for Best Actress.

comedie de l'innocence A nine year old boy disturbs the subdued atmosphere of a birthday celebration by announcing that his 'real' mother lives elsewhere.

exhibition > acmi lounge

Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces An exhibition of photographic portraits of the iconic French actress by leading international photographers.

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