There may be no living actor — excepting, say, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Juliette Binoche — who better represents world cinema than Isabelle Huppert. Her career has spanned from the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Maurice Pialat, and Michael Cimino to Hong Sang-soo, Mia Hansen-Løve, and Michael Haneke, to name but a solid handful, and so it’s only natural that her visit to a film festival — New York’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, in this case, for her starring role in Guillaume Nicloux’s Valley of Love — would spur a career-spanning discussion.
And now one can hear it for themselves! The Film Society of Lincoln Center have shared the audio of a recent, live event on their podcast, The Close-Up, in which Huppert discusses the particular path she’s taken towards international superstardom while fielding numerous questions from the audience. There’s a second, posted as part of The Film Comment Podcast, that starts at about 41:10 into the recording. As considerations of her work, it bears the advantage of her perspective; as a display of the actress’ intelligence, it’s as effective as her greatest performances.
Listen below: