La Presse at the 74th Berlinale | Isabelle Huppert in three stages

(Berlin) Isabelle Huppert appeared Monday afternoon at a press conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Berlin in a black suit, Monday evening on the stage of the Zoo Palast in a black lace dress, then a few hours later at the other end of the city, at the Berlinale Palast, in a green lamé dress. I wore the same Vacuum Cleaner House t-shirt from morning to night. When you’re not a star…

The French actress was in the German capital to present two films: The people next door, by André Téchiné, in the Panorama section and A Traveler’s Needs, by Hong Sang-soo, in competition. Two films by renowned filmmakers who are diametrically opposed and two roles that are polar opposites of each other.

“André Téchiné doesn’t fly, but he’s a great director! I am happy to see him again after all these years,” Isabelle Huppert told the audience at Zoo Palast to explain the absence in Berlin of Téchiné, with whom she toured in 1979. The Brontë sisters. She added that she was delighted to be at the Berlinale, two years after an honorary Golden Bear that she received in absentia.

In The people next door, Isabelle Huppert plays a police officer returning from almost a year’s sick leave. She recovers from the suicide death of her lover Slimane, also a police officer, and fraternizes with new neighbors, a couple and their little daughter. Very quickly, she realizes that the father is a far-left activist who despises the police and has already served time in prison. Which confronts her with certain dilemmas.

We cannot say that the most recent film from the filmmaker Appointment and Wild reeds – which continues to tour at a brisk pace, despite being 80 years old – is among his most successful. The game inspired by Hafsia Herzi, always astonishing, does not manage to save this shaky and predictable scenario from banality, with thesis-based dialogues that are not very credible (like Isabelle Huppert as a judicial police officer).

I preferred Isabelle Huppert in the role of an enigmatic French tourist and evanescent seductress in South Korea in A Traveler’s Needs, by Hong Sang-soo. We don’t know anything about her character Iris’s past and we won’t know much about her present. She is in Seoul penniless, drinks rice wine like sparkling water and gives French lessons using an atypical method of her own that she recently developed.

“It’s a very philosophical sort of statement about what it means to be alive, what it means to be a human being, what it means to be alone and what it means to be together.” , summarized Isabelle Huppert at a press conference on Monday afternoon.

We find in this cinematographic essay shot in English with the means at hand, the singular minimalist signature of the prolific Hong Sang-soo. The Korean filmmaker, a regular at the Berlinale, once again offers Isabelle Huppert (whom he reunites in a third film) an offbeat score, this time made up of repetitions of dialogue and insistent winks. It’s strange and original, comical and dry all at the same time. An extravagant stone in the rich and always astonishing filmography of one of the greatest actresses of cinema.

Franco-German sentimental education

In Foreign language, presented in competition, Fanny (Lilith Grasmug), 17 years old, a shy student from Strasbourg, is doing a language exchange in Leipzig, with her correspondent Lena (Josefa Heinsius), a left-wing activist who looks like a young Catherine Dorion. Fanny emancipates herself during this short stay in Germany, but the return is brutal in France, where she is the victim of intimidation and has tense relations with her parents. It is in this context that Lena arrives at her house. We quickly understand that Fanny has a propensity to invent a life for herself and that she will be caught up in her lies.

French filmmaker Claire Burger, Caméra d’or at Cannes in 2014 for Party Girlfilms with modesty and inspiration the sentimental education of two young girls in bloom. Foreign language is a coming-of-age story in two times and two places, which alternates between adolescent family frustrations and the euphoria of romantic discovery, against a backdrop of electroclash music and mush covered in chocolate. Claire Burger sets a captivating atmosphere, but her scenario lacks subtlety. This film that we have the impression of having seen several times, in different variations, unfortunately ends up running on empty.

Accommodation costs were paid by the Berlinale and Telefilm Canada.