Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Pierre Darroussin Interview

Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Pierre Darroussin Interview

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Michael Nyqvist
Director: Marc Fitoussi
Rated: M
Running Time: 100 minutes

Synopsis: The fabulous Isabelle Huppert leads an exceptional cast in the wonderfully charming and poignant new romance from writer-director Marc Fitoussi.

Long married 50-somethings Brigitte (Huppert) and Xavier (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) are prize cattle breeders in regional France. Life is good, but the departure of their children from home has thrown Brigitte's world into flux, as she finds herself locked into routine. She keeps hoping for something else, something more.

A party held by students on the adjoining property accelerates this latent crisis and Brigitte impulsively sets off for Paris under the guise of a doctor's appointment. The city immediately invigorates her, and when she meets a charming Danish gentleman (Michael Nyqvist, As It Is In Heaven, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), she impulsively allows herself to be flattered by his attentions…

Beautifully performed by the central leads but also expertly supported by Marina Foïs, Audrey Dana, Pio Marmaï, Clément Métayer and Anaïs Demoustier, FOLIES BERGÈRE is a deliciously appealing fable about the choices of everyday life, and a reminder that it's never too late to change.

Folies Bergere
Release Date: December 11th, 2014
Website: www.foliesbergere.com.au

Interview with Isabelle Huppert

Question: After Copacabana, you are reunited with Marc Fitoussi. What seduced you in Folies Bergère?

Isabelle Huppert: We already had in mind to work together again. I profoundly like Marc's style and distance. There is, in his writing, something very graceful, with this humour that is his own. He is interested in detailing characters from the inside, from who permeates a social reality, without a naturalist approach to their environment. Here, he describes the rural world in a nonstereotypical way, because the story shows wealthy farmers. When reading the script, I once again enjoyed the quality of the dialog, the comical and clever situations, always on the edge. Marc never abandons a character and his look, full of funniness, tenderness and humanity, manages to make them likeable. In this sense, his cinema, thanks to his intelligence and precision, reminds me of the golden age of Hollywood comedy.


Question: It seems like he casts light on a part of you we rarely see on the screen…

Isabelle Huppert: People are maybe more used to see me in more sharp-figured characters, involved in denser strategies and conflicts. Here, it is a relatively light cinema, subtly stylised, oscillating between fable and romantic comedy. It softens its protagonists, making it easier to identify with a character like Brigitte, quite simple even though she also has a part of shadow/darkness and ambiguity. Marc Fitoussi is a master in the art of developing situations that might seem banal, using the work of his actors.


Question: Is there some sort of connection between Babou, the character you played in Copacabana, and Brigitte, the heroine of Folies Bergère?

Isabelle Huppert: A bit like Babou, Brigitte also dreams of a better and more adventurous life, and we can 11 understand her will to escape everyday life. But, when the marginal fantasy of Babou would naturally take her to the fantasy of going away, Brigitte's desire of escape, much more hidden, can surprise even more. Nothing in her announces this need for fiction or something else, except her eczema. And it's a beautiful and touching idea, the symptom that expresses her malfunction. I like this poetry in Marc's work, of not predetermining his characters according to their profile or their social origin. And this prevents us from labelling his cinema in any category.


Question: Did playing a cattle-breeder amuse you?

Isabelle Huppert: Everything amuses me. We played in -Pays de Caux' at the farm of a cattle-breeders couple with a local and very friendly Brigitte Lecanu who briefed us, especially for calving. It was quite a strong moment because, despite the technique, it was a birth, with the emotion it generates and the physical element of the action. A first for me, as is often the case with the films and professions we are meant to represent. Cinema develops this sixth sense, between subconscious, hyper-conscious and self-duplication, enabling us to do things we would never do in real life. But the film does not only take place at the farm. And from Paris to Israel, we moved a lot, echoing Brigitte's desire, in some sort of road movie. Until this moment of peace, and of floating, like it should be, at the Dead Sea.


Question: How would you define the character of Brigitte?

Isabelle Huppert: She is a bored woman, a bit like Emma Bovary, especially since the movie takes place in Normandy. But she is not a dramatic character. She has no guilt. Because, from the moment she decides to take these three days in Paris, she fully enjoys this escapade, living in the present time without asking herself questions like when she enjoys listening to this demonstrator in front of the Galeries Lafayettes, helps this Indian street seller, or when she meets this Danish man who she will leave without melancholia. Quite airy, Brigitte lives all these adventures, good or bad, with distance and a permanent humour that protects her (and us). Her failed relationship with Stan, that amused me a lot, is an example. She is also a shepherdess who comes back home next to her husband, wonderfully played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin, who understood thanks to 12 this escape how much he loves her. Here again, I find the film very subtle, because there is no blame or dispute in this couple, just a form of weariness and everyday life that, one day, needs to be shaken.

Interview with Jean-Pierre Darroussin

Question: Did you know Marc Fitoussi's work when he offered you a part in Folies Bergère? I had seen Copacabana and liked a lot; its fair tone and the tenderness of its characters. I had felt Isabelle Huppert happy and free. When he contacted me, Marc Fitoussi told me he had first thought about Gérard Jugnot, who was not available, to play Xavier. I did not mind this, because the people who write the characters own them.


Question: Part of Folies Bergère depicts the rural world. Was this world familiar to you? I was raised in the countryside, in the small village of Vernais, in the Berry, where Charolais cows are bred. My uncle was a cattle-breeder. And until the age of 18, I would spend at least 4 months on his farm every year. I wasn't disoriented by the film, and the calving we see wasn't my first one (although at the time, I was only the child who was bringing the buckets of water). And I am very pleased to have been able to play this farmer, and to have found my self again amongst these cows, padding their muzzle, animals with which I feel so comfortable. When I was a child, I remembered I would push them with my shoulder into the barn to set up my stool and milk them, thing that I can do very well.


Question: Xavier Lecanu, your character, unveils himself during the film. How would you describe him? With his countryside-dandy style, far from the clichés we have, we feel he is quite a refined man, certainly thanks to his wife. These cattle-breeders became wealthy, like the ones who remain today and whose business grew, when so many others disappeared. A graduate from the agricultural college, he didn't study rhetoric and is not a big mouth. But after all, loquacity does not imply the understanding of the world. He is above all a sentimental, somebody who gets up in the morning with the sense of living something wonderful with these animals, this nature. Giving life, producing good meat… He is proud. His life softens him and he his thankful to his fate. Allowing his emotions to appear, he is also a romantic who was seduced by this woman, who he found fragile and off the wall. Protective, he has wide enough shoulders to accept the differences of the ones he loves, despite his complex relationship with his son.


Question: Do you feel an affinity with Xavier? Knowing that a relationship remains fragile, that there can be frustrations and unsaid things, weariness and that love does not prevent fantasy… I probably share with him this side of vulnerability, and the will to continue, to not give up after a failure, a weakness or a deception. In the end, ordeals are experiences.


Question: He is deeply touching when he goes to meet his son in his circus school… I think we have children for this difference that comes from oneself, extremely moving and insightful for one's life, even if they become very disappointing one day. And it is quite clever for Marc Fitoussi to have placed this scene when the character is at his worst and to confront him with someone who will not take over his business. The scale of what's at stake when parents project themselves on their children is unlimited. A bit like a deaf person who would hear for the first time, Xavier discovers like a revelation what it means 'to be a dad". It is his vulnerability that opens his eyes, and enables him to start to conquer again his father status and stay, to his wife, a great man.


Question: What memories do you keep from the shooting? That of an extreme cold and of the freezing wind when we were shooting in Normandy, not far away from the Etretat cliffs. I think about the farmers who welcomed us and lent us their animals, about the Dead Sea and Agnès Godard, the director of photography, who I must have walked pass while she was on her bike when she was a child in the Berry, where her dad, a vet, would visit my uncle's farm (I discovered all this during shooting). I was also working with Isabelle Huppert for the first time, a wonderful and surprising partner. On top of her presence and pertinence, there is in her a superior intelligence. We enjoyed working together. I love this film, I find it very endearing.  

 

Folies Bergere
Release Date: December 11th, 2014