“Holding a lot of money creates ghosts”

Isabelle Huppert (Paris, 1953) is an institution in her own right. An actress capable of flashing the most risque roles without losing her composure. It was shown in Cannes in 1978 Violette Nozier (1978), about a young prostitute who falls in love with her father and Michael Haneke, where the troublemaker was from Pianist (2001), Leap Forward from Sexual Repression.

Huppert collaborated with Bertrand Tavernier (1280 alms1981), Jean-Luc Godard (Hi, who can live life1980), André Téchiné (Las hermanas Brontë1979) or Hong Sang-soo (In another country2012); without forgetting the impressiveness Ella (2016), by Paul Verhoeven, for which he won a Golden Globe.

We spoke with the actress on her way to Madrid, where she was performing in the lead role at Teatros del Canal Berenice, by order of Romeo Castellucci. In his new movie The richest woman in the worlddirected by Thierry Klifa, is placed in the shoes of Marianne Farrère, translated by Liliane Bettencourt, archimillonaria dueña de L’Oreal.

A scandal arises when her hija (played by Marina Foïs) is unable to give her best friend, gay photographer and businessman Pierre-Alain (Laurent Lafitte), the improbable sum of 1,000 million euros.

The storm turned into a political scandal secret grabs from the mayor himself between the millionaire and their accountants, it was there that they discovered that they were also devoted to politicians from the political and political sphere. The film focuses on the seduction of a powerful photographer that wreaks havoc on a Parisian family and society.

A very lucrative passion for the evening, which not only makes hija desperate for the will to defend his (immense) inheritance, but also comes with the painful feelings of feeling unloved by his mother (who amazes her, but does not feel well).

Please. It’s obviously a mystery in this movie if this man is abusing her or if he’s as simple as those who find true friends and have the whole back of the world to do with their money what he gives them. 1000 million euros is an astronomical number, but it was 1% of your fortune. what is your opinion

Response. I believe you have to go see the movie to understand it because the movie has a lot to say about the honesty of this relationship and also its completeness, no one would say ambiguity. There is an emotional ambiguity because you really have a very strong feeling that is somewhere between friendship and love. And it is very touching how it is shown in the movie. But you obviously have the completeness of this relationship because you have so much money at stake that honesty in any case turns into suspicion.

»At a time when the family is at an end, when emotional ties are challenged, when the economy is struggling… It’s not really struggling, because as you rightly said, it’s a smaller part of your property, but in some cases it turns out to be something symbolic. Are we trying to find this strength, this balance?

P. The relationship with the hija is essential. We see that it is true how your mother wastes so many thousands of people, but she also has one clear sky because you feel that your mother does not love her or “enjoy” her. Is there a mother-daughter drama?

R. In any case, it is certain that in this film the story will turn out to be complete if and where it turns out to be crueland moves from comedy to Shakespearean tragedy. This effectively reveals the emotional deficit between this mother and this daughter. It’s a movie where suddenly a mother says to her daughter, “You want to know if you want me? Nothing more. Nothing more than I wonder. Nothing more.” In fact, it is very violent towards the escuchar. And that is paid more in a way… a personal feeling and a figurative feeling. And for this cruelty, or at least what he considers to be cruelty, he will have to pay his mother.

P. It is a very well-known story throughout France, but also throughout the world. What is the best way to interpret characters that existed in real life?

R. When I see a movie and they tell me that it’s inspired by a true story, even more so than the prospect of pleasure I want to hear, it always makes me feel a bit of defiance. If a movie is inspired by real life, there is no absolute guarantee that it will be a good movie. On the other hand, I preferred to understand what was happening when reading the guide, in the dialogues, in the preparation we did. We work a lot in clothes, hair. These are all these indexes, obviously very important, the first things that are given to the viewer. After all, it’s the power of your movie that gets you down. It’s a movie that does it, there’s cinema at play. This is not reality, this is really cinema.

P. Everyone knows that people don’t behave naturally when they are around people with a lot of power. Is the evil of millionaires unknown if their affections are true or interested?

R. This always creates ambiguity, suspicion, y It also creates many ghosts. And that’s obviously what the movie is trying to describe. But in the background, the film does not have enough image for this situation to appeal to the general public.

»What is interesting about the film is that in this story the whole world knew the end, it is the moment when the story became extremely mediatized, where all the interpretations and suspicions became the most excited, the most wandering. However, the film, on the contrary, decided to enter the small door of the intimidation of this relationship and try to understand or put into perspective what can cause this situation, and not show the consequences directly.

P. Let’s take a moment with cases like the Epstein scandal where the feeling that there is an elite that dominates it all and lives with impunity. Bettencourt financed the tapadillo of the parties izquierda and derecha. Does this story also represent life “outside reality”?

R. I don’t think this movie is bad. The elite are not, as they show in the film, protected by what we create: secrets, suspicions, secrets, revelations, family secrets. This can be done in these families as in any other. So there is something universal.

P. In the film, we also see how the husband of the “richest woman in the world” was attacked with anti-Semitic articles during the Nazi occupation of France, leaving him horrified. This former collaborator and fascist of France still weighs the same national trauma?

R. Yes, I believe we have come back to our story in time. It is true that, unlike the Americans, they were able to very quickly reevaluate the history of Vietnam, show, analyze, fictionalize these situations, in France much more restrained. But today we have the opportunity, the opportunity to look at this story from the front.