Why I love Isabelle Huppert’s per­for­mance in Amateur

Mrs. Har­ris Goes to Paris promis­es a delight­ful­ly flam­boy­ant per­for­mance from Isabelle Hup­pert as its vil­lain in the lat­est of the esteemed French actor’s rare Anglo­phone roles. Although the best-known of these few films is prob­a­bly the infa­mous finan­cial flop Heaven’s Gate (1980) or Neil Jordan’s kitsch B‑movie Gre­ta (2018), the finest is sure­ly Amateur.

Fea­ture num­ber five by nou­velle vague-inspired Amer­i­can auteur Hal Hart­ley, Ama­teur is an unusu­al film about phi­los­o­phy, amne­sia, pornog­ra­phy, flop­py discs and the unlike­ly alliances that shared adver­si­ty forces us to make.

Thomas (Mar­tin Dono­van), wakes up on a New York side street, unaware of who he is and what is going on. He bumps into Isabelle (Hup­pert), an erot­i­ca writer in search of a pub­lish­ing deal, who spends hours every day typ­ing up her work in a cof­fee shop, much to the ire of the barista who com­plains that she buys only a sin­gle muf­fin or cof­fee each vis­it. We also meet Sofia (Eli­na Löwen­sohn), who asserts that Thomas traf­ficked her into porn when she was a teenag­er, and now seeks revenge on Jacques, Thomas’s crime boss, by obtain­ing and leak­ing data on flop­py disks that will lead to his exposure.

Even in today’s sup­pos­ed­ly more enlight­ened times, being a promi­nent woman in the film indus­try means that your sex appeal is always brought up in the press. Hup­pert and Hart­ley are aware of this, and they devel­oped a char­ac­ter who is vul­gar and sex-obsessed, yet clum­sy and naïve. While Thomas is bathing, and Isabelle is sit­ting in the bath­room talk­ing to him, their con­ver­sa­tion tends towards his cur­rent naked state. Hart­ley is satiris­ing how most films seem to be unable to depict nudi­ty with­out refer­ring to sex, by bring­ing the con­ver­sa­tion towards the top­ic through awk­ward, unsexy dia­logue. In a hilar­i­ous exchange, we learn that Isabelle, who is try­ing to find work in writ­ing erot­i­ca, bears an unusu­al dis­tinc­tion: ​‘How can you be a nympho­ma­ni­ac and nev­er have had sex?’ ​‘I’m choosy’.

Lat­er on, Isabelle dons an Irma Vep-style cat­suit and attempts to per­form a sug­ges­tive pose, with her head lean­ing back and her weapon of choice (a drill) point­ing upwards à la 007. It’s hilar­i­ous­ly gauche and frus­trates any main­stream view­er who wants to be tit­il­lat­ed. Con­ver­sa­tion in the film often draws on sex, but the only sex we see is brief glimpses of VHS porn, involv­ing Sofia, played on TV.

The vio­lence in the film ini­tial­ly seems like this as well – the film’s open­ing scene, with Matthew lying on the pave­ment after hav­ing been pushed out of a win­dow, does not depict the actu­al act of vio­lence. We do not see his acts of vio­lence against Sofia either, but it is heav­i­ly implied that Thomas is cul­pa­ble. The film chal­lenges you to iden­ti­fy with and root simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for an appar­ent abuser, his alleged vic­tim and a third par­ty who appears com­plete­ly out of place. As every­one gets increas­ing­ly embroiled in the crim­i­nal under­world, the film becomes very vio­lent – though some of the vio­lence is played for laughs. It’s com­plete­ly unpredictable.

Thomas is ​‘reset’ – with­in the con­fines of the film’s nar­ra­tive time­frame, we see him treat peo­ple with kind­ness, and at worst, ambiva­lence. Isabelle is also ​‘reset’, seek­ing a career after years in the con­vent, and Sofia just wants to get her revenge over and done with. Three peo­ple with sep­a­rate pasts, but only two can remem­ber them. Cru­cial­ly, the one who has wronged some­body can­not remem­ber doing so.

The film’s French New Wave DNA is very appar­ent. The graph­ics at the begin­ning are as strik­ing as, say, those of Godard’s La Chi­noise or Week­end, the non­cha­lant line deliv­ery is very Bres­son­ian, and the core mystery’s slow unrav­el­ling would make Riv­ette proud. The afore­men­tioned graph­ics show a black screen with coloured lines mov­ing across in ran­dom direc­tions, reflect­ing the unpre­dictable jour­neys that the film’s char­ac­ters find them­selves thrust into, and the film’s com­men­tary on pornog­ra­phy is on the right side of history.

Hup­pert wrote a let­ter to Hart­ley beg­ging him to cast her in one of his films – sure­ly an hon­our for a direc­tor that no for­mal award or acco­lade can beat. Hup­pert has worked with many fine film­mak­ers, such as Pre­minger, Téch­iné, Losey, Hansen-Løve, Ver­ho­even, and col­lab­o­rat­ed mul­ti­ple times with Chabrol, Haneke and Godard, but here, more than ever, we can see that she is at the fore­front of devel­op­ing her character.

The genius of the sto­ry is that so much is off-screen and left to inter­pre­ta­tion. Though Thomas is framed more cen­tral­ly than Sofia, it is strong­ly implied that he is her abuser, and thus the vil­lain of the sto­ry. Fol­low­ing sev­er­al mishaps with crim­i­nal asso­ciates, she has to aban­don her plan and take his side to evade a mutu­al ene­my. The film refers to the abuse inher­ent to pornog­ra­phy, and a scene with a video store clerk com­ments on the way in which it makes men see women mere­ly as objects for their own tit­il­la­tion. How many oth­er films actu­al­ly call out the porn indus­try for the abu­sive, exploita­tive, misog­y­nis­tic force it actu­al­ly is?

Char­ac­ters seem to be aware that any film that uses tech­nol­o­gy as a plot device will become dat­ed quick­ly. Their ref­er­ences to the lim­i­ta­tions of mid-90s mobile phones, and the queer­ness of the flop­py disk sug­gest that wire­less tech­nol­o­gy is in an awk­ward tran­si­tion­al stage where­by it’s increas­ing­ly use­ful but not yet reli­able per se. The sound­track is also very root­ed in its time – it fea­tures PJ Har­vey (who would lat­er star as Mary Mag­da­lene in Hartley’s The Book of Life), Liz Phair and My Bloody Valen­tine – three pow­er­hous­es of angsty, aggres­sive 90s alternative.

Though Hup­pert is one of the most ver­sa­tile actors in the world, her best-known role type is that of cun­ning, cold, and some­times cru­el char­ac­ters. The gorm­less, con­fused yet well-inten­tioned Isabelle of Ama­teur is a com­plete rejec­tion of this. Her char­ac­ters often know more than they reveal, but here, she is lost and try­ing to help an amne­si­ac piece togeth­er his past. Ten years lat­er, Hup­pert would play anoth­er ​‘quirky’ role in David O. Russell’s insuf­fer­able I Heart Huck­abees, but the key to Ama­teur is the self-aware­ness, script and deft coör­di­na­tion of con­tra­pun­tal moments of loud­ness and sub­tle­ty. It is fun­ny, fas­ci­nat­ing, mov­ing, and has a per­fect end­ing which serves the sto­ry perfectly.

One can lav­ish praise on the machi­na­tions of this won­der­ful­ly lay­ered, dense and thrilling film, but at the end of the day I’m here to cel­e­brate Hup­pert most of all. Ama­teur is a per­fect show­case for not only her sheer act­ing prowess, but also her will­ing­ness to lead films that are sub­ver­sive and intel­lec­tu­al. The Gal­lic great has gall, and is more than just a pro­fes­sion­al. She’s an artist who always ele­vates what­ev­er film she is in.

Ciné Lumière in South Kens­ing­ton is run­ning an Isabelle Hup­pert ret­ro­spec­tive sea­son until Novem­ber 1.