Isabelle Huppert has always operated in the space between restraint and explosion. This week in Madrid, the 73-year-old icon of European cinema found herself at the center of that tension once again, alternating between the stark, avant-garde minimalism of the stage and the gilded, claustrophobic world of the ultra-wealthy.
The French legend recently concluded a three-day run in Madrid, starring in a provocative monologue of Bérénice. Directed by the Italian visionary Romeo Castellucci, this version of Jean Racine’s classic is less a traditional play and more a theatrical excavation. For Huppert, the experience was a study in contradictions: performing behind a translucent curtain, constrained by the rigid structure of alexandrine verse, yet finding a profound sense of liberation within those very limits.
Whereas the theater audience offered standing ovations, Huppert is simultaneously preparing for a different kind of scrutiny. Her latest film, La mujer más rica del mundo (The Richest Woman in the World), is set for release in Spain this Friday. The movie offers a cinematic exploration of the life of Liliane Bettencourt, the former heiress to the L’Oréal empire, whose final years were marred by a sprawling legal scandal involving the photographer François-Marie Banier.
The Bettencourt saga, which gripped France for years, centered on allegations that Banier had abusively influenced the aging billionaire to gift him hundreds of millions of euros. The legal battle eventually ended in an out-of-court settlement in September 2017, shortly before Bettencourt passed away at the age of 94.
The Psychology of Wealth and Misery
For Huppert, portraying a woman of Bettencourt’s stature is not merely an exercise in playing a “billionaire,” but an exploration of how extreme wealth functions as both a shield and a prison. She views the fascination with power not as a simple desire for luxury, but as a complex human fantasy.
When reflecting on why society is so drawn to these portraits of opulence, Huppert offered a poignant observation: “La riqueza genera muchas fantasías en el ser humano, la miseria solo provoca pena” (Wealth generates many fantasies in humans, misery only provokes pity). She suggests that while art explores both loneliness and poverty, wealth creates a specific kind of suspicion given that it is so unattainable that those who possess it are automatically viewed with skepticism.
Huppert finds a surprising parallel between the princess in Bérénice and the heiress in her modern film. Both women are trapped by “reasons of state”—one by the Roman Senate, the other by the rigid expectations of a corporate dynasty. Both are forced to renounce a forbidden love to maintain a systemic equilibrium. In the case of Bettencourt, Huppert notes that the heiress found a late-life liberation in her friendship with Banier, allowing her to step away from the power of her money for a moment of genuine diversion.
The Art of the ‘No’
With a career that spans decades and continents, Huppert’s resume reads like a history of modern cinema. She has been the muse for Michael Haneke and has collaborated with a global roster of auteurs, including Wes Anderson, Paul Verhoeven, and David O. Russell. Her trophy cabinet is equally exhaustive, featuring two wins at the Cannes Film Festival, two César Awards, and an Academy Award nomination for Elle.
Yet, Huppert insists that her career has been defined as much by what she didn’t do as by what she did. In a profession where many actors fear the void of unemployment, she views the ability to decline a project as a vital tool for artistic survival.
“The path of an actress is expressed more by what she rejects than by what she chooses,” Huppert remarked, noting that she says “no” far more often than “yes.”
This curation is driven by intuition. While she possesses the technical skill to inhabit almost any role, she seeks projects that offer “infinite freedom,” even when the external constraints—like Castellucci’s translucent curtain or a director’s rigid framing—seem restrictive.
Control, Montage, and the Stage
The distinction between the stage and the screen is, for Huppert, a matter of control. In the theater, the actress owns the emotional delivery in real-time. On a film set, yet, the performance is subject to the whims of the editing room.
She admits that the montage process is the most complicated stage of filmmaking, jokingly noting that an actor can easily hold a grudge against an editor. In her view, a finished film is actually a composite of several different movies: the one the actor imagined, the one they performed, the one the director wanted, and the one that finally reaches the audience.
This is why the theater remains her sanctuary. “On stage, nobody controls me,” she says. This freedom allows her to blur the line between character and self; in the final moments of Bérénice, she occasionally breaks the fourth wall, replacing the character’s name with her own: “Isabelle.”
Looking Toward Cannes
Despite her towering achievements, Huppert remains restless. While she has flirted with the idea of directing, she does so with a characteristic irony, suggesting she might only take the helm to “confirm that I am not capable of doing it.”
Her current focus is shifting back to the screen. She is set to return to the Cannes Film Festival with Historias paralelas (Parallel Stories), a new French production directed by the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi. The collaboration marks another chapter in her lifelong pursuit of “formalist” directors who challenge her to find herself through the complexity of their vision.
As she reflects on the current state of cinema, Huppert speaks with a touch of nostalgia for Claude Chabrol, with whom she filmed seven movies. She describes him as a “disfrutón”—someone who truly enjoyed the process—and laments a contemporary industry that often lacks his blend of intelligence and irony.
The next major checkpoint for Huppert will be the premiere of Historias paralelas at the upcoming festival circuit, where the world will once again see how she navigates the delicate boundary between the public myth and the private artist.
Do you consider the allure of power and wealth in cinema is still relevant today? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Keep reading
