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.
This book assembles a brilliant cast of scholars to reflect on the complex meanings and effects of Isabelle Huppert's prolific career and compelling star persona. The diversity of critical approach illuminates Huppert's potent, often paradoxical place in French cinema and beyond, situating her in relation to contemporary ethics, feminist, queer and postcolonial politics, auteurism, genre, popular reception and the nature of stardom itself. This is the essential - and very readable - work on a culturally significant figure, and also an important intervention in film and star studies.
