Juli­ette Binoche explains how to chase free­dom on fem­i­nine terms

It’s hard to keep the con­ver­sa­tion about gen­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion in film fresh. Bring­ing art to activism is a ques­tion of being more cre­ative than sim­ply trot­ting out the par­ty line, repeat­ed­ly, until death. Trust Juli­ette Binoche – the Palme d’Or and Oscar-win­ning French actress, who has worked with art-house dons like Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Abbas Kiarosta­mi and Krzysztof Kieślows­ki, not to men­tion, turned Steven Spiel­berg down three times – to offer a spir­it­ed and inclu­sive take on achiev­ing gen­der equality.

“It’s not about only women,” said Binoche, speak­ing at a Women in Motion talk at this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, ​“It’s also awak­en­ing the need in men to talk about the fem­i­nine, because the world, the way it’s hap­pen­ing, it feels fright­en­ing. We need to open up to anoth­er lay­er of the self, which is anoth­er way… the con­cept of life, the feel­ing of life, feel­ing anoth­er space inside us.”

Show­ing con­fi­dent flu­en­cy at com­mu­ni­cat­ing abstract­ly about the deep forces at work inside us, Binoche con­tin­ued: ​“I believe that the two poles – the mas­cu­line and the fem­i­nine – are in each of us. The first impulse to come to life is some­thing about mas­culin­i­ty: con­quer­ing life, con­quer­ing the world, but you have to have equi­lib­ri­um between those two poles. You have to relax, you have to allow anoth­er lay­er of your­self, and it means some­how the dri­ve has to go down, the need of pos­ses­sion has to go down, the need of pow­er has to go down. It’s a sort of a humil­i­ty space you’ve got to find.”

It was exhil­a­rat­ing to hear that Binoche has been express­ing these views to some of the world’s most pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial male direc­tors. She explained how she chal­lenged Spiel­berg and Scors­ese over their lack of female pro­tag­o­nists, con­fid­ing and lament­ing that: ​“Scors­ese has a very fem­i­nine side of him­self. For me, he didn’t explore his fem­i­nine side.”

While Binoche’s words may not have had a demon­stra­tive effect on the way those two movie giants do busi­ness, she claims to have had a direct impact on the French direc­tor, Olivi­er Assayas, who is in Cannes again this year with Per­son­al Shop­per, and who came to Cannes in 2014 with Clouds of Sils Maria, star­ring Binoche oppo­site Kris­ten Stew­art. ​“I phoned him [Assayas] and said, ​‘You’re a lover of Bergman, who thought about women in the most beau­ti­ful ways. Why don’t you write for women?’ And he did. That’s why we made Sils Maria.”

The thought of Binoche bar­relling around the film indus­try, call­ing out male dom­i­nance by chan­nelling fem­i­nine ideas and lan­guage choic­es is deeply cheer­ing. A lot of who she is today steams from a bold ear­ly deci­sion to turn down Hol­ly­wood, in order to stay liv­ing and work­ing in Europe. ​“My first agent said to me, ​‘If you want to work inter­na­tion­al­ly then you have to move to Amer­i­ca, and live in Hol­ly­wood.’ I thought, ​‘No. It can’t be.’ Some­how, I knew that I had to step away from this sys­tem. Being inde­pen­dent is the most impor­tant thing, because then you can be real­ly free. If you belong to a sys­tem you have the rules of it. I think as a free spir­it you have to be smart enough to say, ​‘Yeah, I get in, but I go out because I don’t belong to any­body: just myself, and my trust, and what life is to me.’

“The work to be inde­pen­dent, the work to be an indi­vid­ual is your respon­si­bil­i­ty as a per­son – men and women – and not belong­ing to a sys­tem that’s going to tell you what to do, rul­ing your spir­it and rul­ing your way of mak­ing your dream true.”

Bin­coche described a kind of a bal­ance between choos­ing meaty, com­plex roles and using more con­ven­tion­al work as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to push her ideals into a new space. ​“Say­ing ​‘no’ to cer­tain films is as impor­tant as the ​‘yes’ because it real­ly defines you but I have to say that late­ly I’ve done a sci­ence-fic­tion film [Ghost in the Shell]. It’s a very male-ori­en­tat­ed film, but I had the occa­sion in it to fill up some fem­i­nine emo­tions and I jumped into it, because I felt that this is at least a lit­tle bit of a door that I can get in and say, ​“Hey! By the way… feel, have emo­tions, be connected.”

Juli­ette Binoche was present to pro­mote her mem­ber­ship of We Do It Togeth­er, a new non­prof­it pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, found­ed by Chiara Tile­si, which makes films about women for women. Three oth­er mem­bers were also present and speak­ing bril­liant­ly: Tile­si, direc­tor Patri­ca Riggen and pro­duc­er Mar­i­anne Slot. Oth­er mem­bers of this impres­sive-sound­ing team include Queen Lat­i­fah, Jodie Fos­ter, Jes­si­ca Chas­tain, Haifa Al Man­sour, Marielle Heller, Amma Asante, Ziyi Zhang and Robin Wright.

The We Do It Togeth­er talk with Juli­ette Binoche, Patri­cia Riggen, Mar­i­anne Slot and Chiara Tile­si took place on 15 May at the Cannes Film Festival.