The quiet pause also allows for further reflection on White Material, Huppert's first collaboration with veteran filmmaker and French compatriot Claire Denis. (The film opens this weekend in New York and will be available simultaneously at IFC on Demand.) Huppert stars as Maria Vial, a coffee plantation owner thrust into limbo when civil war overtakes her anonymous African nation. Her black farmhands pack up and flee, leaving her, her family and her harvest squarely in the crosshairs of post-colonial crisis. Abandoning the land will cost her everything, Marie believes. But might her determination to stay cost her just as much?
I caught up with Huppert last week to talk it all over, including a few asides into her other recent family-in-danger films, the loss this year of her mentor Chabrol, and why she said yes to a particularly intense episode of Law & Order: SVU.
Should I come back in a bit?
No, no... [Sending text message] You know, in China they have a contest for the fastest person with this.
The fastest text messager?
Yes. I would not win.
I envisioned you as more of an iPhone person.
Oh, no. Oh, no. [Spends another moment texting] I am so sorry. OK!
OK! That's actually a fairly fitting way to start; White Material was made several years ago and has been held up since then. How does returning to it today affect your impressions of it?
On this movie, especially, the gap between when we did the movie and when it was released is unusual. In foreign countries we're used to it. But I've done five films and two plays in the time between when we made this and now. Still, it's always good to come back to it, to speak about it.
How could you and Claire Denis not have worked together before this?
I don't know. We've been friends forever. You'll have to ask her. The move comes from the director. Luckily this time the move -- or the impulse, let's say -- came from me. We've always been close. Claire is really part of my artistic family and my artistic landscape. I read that book by Doris Lessing a couple years ago -- The Grass is Singing? I talked to Claire about it and asked her what she thought. Would it be a good idea to do it onscreen? She was reluctant. She liked the book, of course, but she was not too keen on doing a character like this -- a victim, which is sort of problematic. It's kind of obsolete, the way it's described in Doris Lessing's book. She decided to keep the idea of a white woman in Africa having the face these kinds of events, but she wanted to come up with a much stronger character -- much more physical, much more active, almost like a man, you know? Then she ended up asking Marie Ndiaye, who's a great French writer, to write the script together.
Your character Marie is most definitely a modern woman with tremendous resolve, yet she's also a classic colonialist up to her neck in denial. Which did you find defined her more?
I think it's both. It's the two sides of the medal. She denies everything, and she has blinders and doesn't want to see reality. But the other side of that stubbornness is her confidence, you know? Confidence in something no one else is confident in anymore. She has no political consciousness whatsoever of what's going on. She got along with these people, and she never saw any reason she would be in danger. She just wants to keep moving and have something to do. And what she wants to do is save the harvest -- nothing else exists. But that's her life -- she wants to save her life. She wants to save her land. She was not born there, but that's her life.
The movie is interesting and touching because Claire Denis is telling us not about what people have, but who people are. It's not about possession, it's not about greed or stealing anything from anybody. It's beyond this, above this. It's about being what you are, not being what you have.
There were some striking similarities between this film and Home, another of your films from a few years back: Society descends on a family's home, with catastrophic consequences. Did you note the parallels?
Absolutely. That was an interesting year for me: I was offered Claire's, then came Home, and then there was another one I did after that called The Sea Wall, directed by Rithy Panh, a well-known Cambodian director. In the first place I hesitated doing the two other films because they were very similar, but then, for that reason, I decided I would do all three -- precisely because they were all similar. I would get to go to countries I would never have gone to otherwise, like Bulgaria for Home and Cambodia for The Sea Wall. Claire's film and Sea Wall are very similar because they both take place in a political situation -- having to face people around me. Home is more like a fable, but still: It's a family. And these are three women desperately, madly attached to a place. In all three it was about the idea of how the human being is defined by ties. To land, to family. There is a lot about this idea of linking that makes you relate to a place.
How does geography influence character for you?
It does a lot, especially in these three movies. They all took me to remote countries -- or far from where I am, anyway -- and very strong climatic environments. That defines a character a lot in terms of physicality.
When Claude Chabrol passed away a few months ago, what kind of reconsideration or reappraisal of your long working relationship did that provoke?
When it happened, I realized how much I owed him. How much he loved me, how precious my relationship to him was. He filmed me like I was his daughter -- not an object of fantasy, but just like his daughter. He was not idealizing me. There was no seduction, you know? It was like a father would film his child. So that made it easier to have total confidence -- which I gave him back, of course, because there was mutual trust. It was total acceptance of who I was, which is an immense gift for an actor. It's really taking a person and exploring every little detail and bit of her persona, you know?
You also recently made a guest appearance on Law & Order: SVU opposite Sharon Stone--
Yeah, I did!
**Which blew my mind
Really? Blew your mind, like, you liked it? Or...
Oh, yes. I liked it very much. Just the whole--
It was strong! It was strong!
How did that appearance come to be? Why did you want to do it?
Because it was strong -- and even stronger, because it's the [season finale]. I did it very simply. I was approached last year when I was doing Quartett at BAM, directed by Robert Wilson -- centuries away from SVU of course. I was approached by Neal Baer, who happens to be one of the producers. He offered to write an episode for me and asked me if I would consider it. I said, "Why not?" I was curious. He told me the synopsis of the story, and I said, "OK."
It's so much more heightened than what we usually see from you -- this big American TV police procedural-turned-melodrama. When I realized you were on, I said, "Oh, God, please just let Isabelle Huppert do what she does."
I think when you see the episode you can tell I stuck to what I was. But instinctively... I have to say I didn't know that series. I'm not very much into serial culture anyway. But then I watched a couple of episodes, and I realized it was very well-acted. I liked the performances -- especially the guest performances. The regular actors are very good! But the guests who came in were very strong. So I said out of curiosity, "Why not?" I liked the way they talked to me. And I was not disappointed. It was very strong, as you say -- it has to get right to the point. You don't have time. But ultimately I thought, "This is me!" Because they wrote it for me! They wrote it for a French woman, and it was me. It was very intense. I liked doing it.
A lot of screen actors are moving to TV these days, and there is probably a case to be made for television being the new cinema -- at least for actors: High production values, better writing, longer arcs, longer narratives. Do you foresee doing more yourself?
No, no. In France, no. I never do TV. I know more and more movie actors do it; maybe it's more here. I'm not that familiar with how people do it. I mean, here, sometimes you can deliver the most extraordinary and outstanding performances on television. I'm thinking, for example, of Al Pacino in the Kevorkian movie?
You Don't Know Jack?
I mean, "amazing" is not enough. So incredible, so brilliant. I was really struck by it. So when television gives you that kind of opportunity, I think why not? But I never did anything like that in France. I did a lot of television years ago when I started being an actress -- before I became a movie actress. But for the moment I'm fulfilled being a movie actress.