Isabelle Huppert on Dark Humor, Difficult Women, and the Political Subtext of ‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris’

Asked whether she chooses her roles on the basis of subverting expectations, however, Huppert offers a firm no. “What people expect of me as a performer is beyond my preoccupation,” she says. “That would mean that you have some kind of strategy, and I don’t care. I just do a film because I want to do it, and that’s it. I don’t ever think about changing people’s perceptions of me.” She’s also quick to note—quite rightly—that while her best-known performances internationally lean towards darker fare, she’s never been afraid to tackle cheerier, humorous roles too, whether her mischievous turn in François Ozon’s 8 Women, or her madcap performance in David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees.

“I never really set up or defined a border between comedy and dramas,” she continues. “I think you can be very funny in dramas and very sad in comedies. Even in this film, my character has moments where she becomes more tragic than funny. And in the most serious films, you have always this double dimension between irony and drama. So I don’t say to myself, ‘I’m doing a drama, I’m doing comedy.’ I’m just doing a film—that’s it.”

While Huppert has spoken in the past about being able to pick up a character and set it down easily afterwards, does playing a snooty fashion victim in a frothy, feel-good film ever feel like respite from the (to put it mildly) edgier roles she typically takes on? “For me, there is no difficult role,” she says. “Sometimes—and in my case, I am lucky enough to say never—what can happen is a difficult director or a bad mise en scène brings up difficulties which makes the whole journey difficult, but there is no difficult role in and of itself.”

Huppert springs most vividly to life when I suggest that her talents as a straight-up comedic actress are often overlooked, and that her performance in Elle—the gloriously unhinged psychosexual thriller by Paul Verhoeven that delved into contentious subjects like mass murder, rape, sexually violent video games—was actually extremely funny. “Of course it is! Even The Piano Teacher is very funny!” Huppert says. (Widely viewed as one of the most disturbing movies ever made, The Piano Teacher featured sadomasochism, self-mutilation, rape, and even Huppert putting a smashed glass in the pocket of one of her piano students to destroy her career…but we’ll take Huppert’s word for it.)