On Friday October 14th, The Knockturnal had the opportunity to speak with actress Isabelle Huppert on the red carpet after a New York Film Festival screening of her acclaimed new film Things to Come.
In the film Huppert plays a mother of two grown children whose world is upended when her husband announces he’s leaving her for another woman. We spoke with Huppert (whose other film Elle was also screened as part of NYFF) about playing this complicated woman and her ideas on film and art.
Your character Nathalie in Things to Come goes through dramatic life changes over the course of the film while doing her best to keep her composure. Was it difficult playing this type of heartbreak but stay modest?
No, it wasn’t difficult. On the contrary, I think the character is never sentimental, never emotional in a heavy way. She is emotional, but in a very disparate way, very dignified. And well, I really liked her. But the character, she manages to be very…I mean she resents what has happened to her, but also all of a sudden she finds new resources in her life, she keeps moving on, and she also has a great sense of irony, of humor all the time and that certainly helps her to be standing.
You share several key scenes in the film with a feline actor playing Pandora, were there any difficulties working with her?
That wasn’t a trained cat actually. I’m saying that because in Elle, Paul Verhoeven’s film, we used a cat too, but that cat was trained. In Mia Hansen-Løve’s film, the cat wasn’t trained and it was so heavy, I had to carry this cat. But it’s funny, the role of the cat is just wonderful in this film. It’s the exact perfect metaphor for something that you want to get rid of, something that you are still attached to, because that’s the cat of her mother. And so it really represents so many things in this woman’s life: a burden, dependence, non-dependence, something that you care about, something that you want to get rid of. It’s full of significance and a lot of meanings.
What do you think the purpose of Things to Come is? Do you consider it or film in general to be art?
Well the purpose of the film, of any film is to come up with certain questions. And I can’t tell you whether it’s art or not… I see films when they are succeeded as creative, and I don’t know if you can call it art, but I certainly see films as a self individual statement from each filmmaker, that’s how I see film. Not something that wouldn’t be personal. It’s a personal statement.
Things to Come will be at NYFF through October 16th and is slated for a limited release on December 2nd.
We also spoke with Elle director Paul Verhoeven at NYFF.
Can you reflect on filmmaking as an art form?
Because it’s an Art form film. I mean it has been a lost art form, because you don’t see much art anymore, but I think … I chose to become a filmmaker because I thought film was art. Well, so basically, why should you paint? Painting is an art, or writing music … basically, because it’s movie making. Movie making is an art form … 95% of the movies are not … But it has to do with the fact that they reduce everything at the moment to entertainment, or let’s say, the bottom line, or making more money out of money, making more money. But I think film, when film started in beginning of the 20th century, I think all people thought, at that time, basically that film was an art, and it is, rarely so, but I’ve not lost the confidence. I did it because I wanted to be an artist. I started as a, well I’m a mathematician, in fact, basically, but I switched to painting, and ultimately I switched to filmmaking, because I felt that was making art.