Isabelle Huppert: Stardom, Performance, Authorship

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Featuring a lineup of distinguished academics, this collection remedies the absence of scholarly attention to French cinematic legend Isabelle Huppert. This volume deconstructs Hupperts star persona and public profile through critical and theoretical analysis of her various screen rolesfrom her very early appearances alongside Romy Schneider in Csar et Rosalie (Sautet, 1972) and Grard Depardieu in Les Valseuses (1974) to a number of celebrated collaborations with high-profile European auteurs such as Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke and Joseph Losey, and with more popular auteurs such as Claude Chabrol and Franois Ozon. Known for a cerebral internalization of characterization, a technical mastery of extreme emotions, and a singular brand of icy intellectualism, Hupperts performances continue to impress, stun and surprise audiences. By focusing on several theoretical questions that relate to image, identity, sexuality and place, this volume situates Hupperts star persona in the more practical creative contexts of performance, authorship, genre and collaboration. This volume contrasts complementary critical accounts of her stardom by working across the different periods and territories of her career.

Reviews

A useful addition to an understanding of the role [Isabelle Huppert] has played in French cinema and the way it continues to develop. * The Media Education Journal *
This book assembles a brilliant cast of scholars to reflect on the complex meanings and effects of Isabelle Hupperts prolific career and compelling star persona. The diversity of critical approach illuminates Hupperts potent, often paradoxical place in French cinema and beyond, situating her in relation to contemporary ethics, feminist, queer and postcolonial politics, auteurism, genre, popular reception and the nature of stardom itself. This is the essential and very readable work on a culturally significant figure, and also an important intervention in film and star studies. * Diana Holmes, Professor of French at the University of Leeds, UK *

Author Bio

Nick Rees-Roberts is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the Universit Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III, France. His research spans fashion, film and media-culture and he is the author of French Queer Cinema (first ed. 2008, second ed. 2014), and Fashion Film: Art and Advertising in the Digital Age (2018), co-author of Homo exoticus: race, classe et critique queer (2010), and co-editor of Alain Delon: Style, Stardom and Masculinity (2015). Darren Waldron is Senior Lecturer in French and European Cinema at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Jacques Demy (2014), Queering Contemporary French Popular Cinema (2009), co-author of French and Spanish Queer Cinema: Audiences, Communities and Cultural Exchange (2016) and co-editor of Alain Delon: Style, Stardom and Masculinity (2015) and France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema (2007).