Isabelle Huppert

Stardom, Performance, Authorship

Darren Waldron, Nick Rees-Roberts, Darren Waldron, Nick Rees-Roberts

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781501372438
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501348921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Featuring a lineup of distinguished academics, this collection remedies the absence of scholarly attention to French cinematic legend Isabelle Huppert. This volume deconstructs Huppert's star persona and public profile through critical and theoretical analysis of her various screen roles-from her very early appearances alongside Romy Schneider in César et Rosalie (Sautet, 1972) and Gérard Depardieu in Les Valseuses (1974) to a number of celebrated collaborations with high-profile European auteurs such as Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke and Joseph Losey, and with more popular auteurs such as Claude Chabrol and François Ozon.

Known for a cerebral internalization of characterization, a technical mastery of extreme emotions, and a singular brand of icy intellectualism, Huppert's performances continue to impress, stun and surprise audiences. By focusing on several theoretical questions that relate to image, identity, sexuality and place, this volume situates Huppert's star persona in the more practical creative contexts of performance, authorship, genre and collaboration. This volume contrasts complementary critical accounts of her stardom by working across the different periods and territories of her career.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Notes on the Authors
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction—Against Type: Isabelle Huppert’s Unorthodox Stardom Nick Rees-Roberts
• 1 Intimate Distance: The Face of Isabelle Huppert
• 2 The Calculated Maladresse: Isabelle Huppert’s Dual Performance Style
• 3 Women in Extremis: Isabelle Huppert in the Director’s Theatre
• 4 Enduring Extremity: On Isabelle Huppert’s Intertextual Body
• 5 Maternal Eroticism: Queering Isabelle Huppert
• 6 Huppert’s Public: Audience Reception and the Cinema of Michael Haneke
• 7 Huppert and Chabrol: Opacity, Dissonance, and the Crystal-Character
• 8 Embodying the White (Colonial) Woman: Isabelle Huppert’s Roles in Postcolonial Film
• 9 Acting Funny: A Counter-Reading of Huppert’s Star Persona
• 10 “Who the Hell is Isabelle Huppert?”: A French Star in America
• 11 After Elle: Isabelle Huppert’s Performance of Fame, Fashion, and Feminism
• Index
• Imprint