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Isabelle Huppert, b. Paris, 1955. The greatest surprise and failure in Huppert's career came only recently: she was not very good as Emma in Claude Chabrol's lifeless Madame Bovary (91). In Chabrol's conception, she seemed doomed, and contemplating poison, from the outset. There was none of the laughter, the flights of gaiety, romance, and casual earthiness of which Isabelle Huppert is capable. Ironically, she had come closer to the range and tumult of Emma Bovary a few years earlier, for Chabrol, in the very moving Une Affaire de Femmes (87). Was Chabrol simply constrained by the big prestigious subject? Or is there something innately wistful or watchful in Huppert, a pale, numb quality that cannot dominate large stories? She has been industrious and versatile for over twenty years, unusually comfortable in English for a French actress, and intriguing to a great variety of directors (though she never worked for Truffaut). Indeed, she has to rate as one of the most accomplished actresses in the world today, even if she seems short of the passion or agony of her contemporary, Isabelle Adjani. An Adjani Bovary would not have been as controlled -- and viewers would not have left the theater underexercised.
Back to Isabelle Huppert
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From
the Third Edition (1994) David Thomson's 
Huppert
began as a teenager: Faustine et le Bel ete (71, Nina Companeez);
Cesar et Rosalie (72, Claude Sautet); Le Bar de la fourche
(72, Alain Levent); L'Ampelopede (73, Rachel Weinberg); Glissements
Progressifs du Plaisir (74, Alain Robbe-Grillet); Making It
(74, Bertrand Blier); Dupont Lajoie (75, Yves Boisset); Serieux
Comme le Plaisir (74, Robert Beneyoun); Rosebud (74, Otto Preminger);
Le Grand Delire (74, Dennis Berry); Aloise (74, Liliane
de Kermadec); Docteur Francoise Gailland (75, Jean-Louis Bertucelli);
Le Juge et L'Assassin (75, Bertrand Tavernier); Je Suis Pierre
Riviere (75, Christine Lipinska); Le Petit Marcel (75, Jacques
Fansten); The Lacemaker (76, Claude Goretta), the film that won
attention outside France; Des Enfants G?tes (77, Tavernier); Les
Indiens Sont Encore Loin (77, Patricia Moraz); to great acclaim as
the young murderess, fascinating just because of her intent passivity,
in Violette Noziere (78, Chabrol); Retour ? la Bien-Aimee
(78, Jean-Francois Adam); as Anne in The Bronte Sisters (78, Andre
Techine); excellent, sensual, and commonplace in Heaven's Gate
(80, Michael Cimino), even if she seemed to sniff out a small, intimate
picture about how frontier life was lived, instead of a fulminating epic;
Sauve Qui Peut (80, Jean-Luc Godard), her placidity enduring or
encouraging Godard's frenzy of lecture; excellent in Loulou (80,
Maurice Pialat); La Dame aux Cameilias (80, Mauro Bolognini) --
she does have a consumptive glow; Orokseg (80, Marta Meszaros);
Les Ailes de la Colombe (81, Benoit Jacquot); Coup de Torchon
(81, Tavernier); Eaux Profondes (81, Michel Deville); Passion
(82, Godard); The Trout (82, Joseph Losey); Entre Nous (83,
Diane Kurys); Storia di Piera (83, Marco Ferreri); My Best Friend's
Girl (83, Blier); Signe Charlotte (84, Caroline Huppert, her
sister); La Garce (84, Christine Pascal, her costar from Enfants
G?tes -- Huppert has worked frequently with women directors); Sac de
Noeuds (85, Josianne Balasko); losing her sight in Cactus (84,
Paul Cox); doing Dostoyevsky in Les Possed