Isabelle Huppert and John Waters...together at last!

FJI correspondent Doris Toumarkine reports on a singular meeting of two very different screen legends.

It was billed as “An Evening With Isabelle Huppert,” but it was also a subversive two-hander of live chatter at New York's Walter Reade Theater, hosted by The Film Society of Lincoln Center. The go-to girl who has worked for some of the world’s greatest directors in some of cinema’s most shocking films (Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, Chabrol’s La Cérémonie, to name just a few) shared the stage with the “Divine” John Waters, the bad-boy filmmaker director who turned sleaze into a nice word and the divinely grotesque cross-dressing Harris Glenn Milstead into the star better known as Divine.

Huppert is very French and Waters very Baltimore, but there was no continental divide up on the Walter Reade stage. The two found uncommon common ground in a mutual love of disrupting the conventional with their work. The French are good at this and even have a term for it—épater la bourgeoisie or, roughly, shock the pants off the stuffed shirts.

Waters, of course, did this with such films as Pink Flamingos, Mondo Trasho, Polyester and Hairspray (these and other hits will comprise the first complete Waters retrospective in the U.S. this September, also to take place at Lincoln Center). And Huppert, as predictably as the latest technology, continues to disrupt as evidenced by her role as a stroke patient in Cathérine Breillat’s recent and somewhat autobiographical Abuse of Weakness, whose screening preceded the talk.

Huppert and Waters didn’t exactly shock the audience but warmed up the room in a lively conversation (no “scat chat”) revealing the actor and director’s love of working on the edge and deep respect for each other.

And putting things bluntly, as when Waters asked Huppert about whether it was painful for her to play the stroke victim character (“I mean she didn’t even get laid”). Huppert, showing her Frenchiness, countered with her feeling that there could have been and should have been sex in the film. As to whether Breillat, crippled by the real-life stroke, will ever direct again, Huppert said that she’ll be making movies for as long as she can.

Back on their slippery playing field, Waters wanted to know what kind of project Huppert, with nearly a hundred titles to her credit, might say ‘no’ to. Huppert countered that “I’m not an easy girl… I like to play survival victims and put them in the light.”

When Waters accused her of loving to play bad women, Huppert wisely countered with “No. I play women in bad situations.” Touché, as the French also say. As an actor she likes to explore.

Referring to what Waters described as “extreme directors,” Huppert offered that she didn’t work with Fassbinder but did several films with Werner Schroeter, one of her favorites who “reminds me of you.” Huppert “got along so well with him” and says that when she believes in a director’s talent, “I’m completely comfortable and like to give myself. Huppert also regrets not having worked with Buñuel, Bergman, Sirk, Hitchcock and (drumroll) Waters.

Continuing on the “extreme” track, Waters asked her about Lars von Trier. Waters is a “fan.” Huppert, for whom playing a nymphomaniac would be no stretch, allowed that “I like him but never worked with him.”

Movies chewed over included Elia Kazan’s Wanda, which Huppert’s husband distributes and which, said Waters, rehearsed in the famed and infamous Warhol Factory. Huppert called the film interesting because it’s about the creative process, how to get a movie made, a metaphor about finding the money.

Waters, referring to the film’s urinating scene, asked Huppert whether she considered Haneke’s The Piano Teacher “the most extreme of movies.” She concurred: “Yes, it’s radical and extreme but also a great love story.” Maybe surprising to many, Huppert described Haneke (also the director of the grim and brilliant Amour) as “funny.”

Generally, Huppert said she gets along with directors who have a vision. “I don’t get along with non-talented people, that’s for sure.” But she feels liberated when working with those she trusts and finds shelter in the work.

She sees no difference in female directors and believes their movies can’t be called “female.” Asked specifically about Marguerite Duras, about whether she was a friend, Huppert got a laugh when she shot back: “I’m not sure you can be friends with Duras.”

And she’s not a believer in rehearsals: “Especially before shooting, it takes life from the role.”

Huppert shared that she’s opening next week in Jean Gênet’s play The Maids and is shooting two films in America, one Norwegian, the other French. As for the difference between theatre and film, she calls movies “routine” and theatre “exceptional.”

And, Waters dared, might she herself direct? “Maybe out of curiosity but maybe never because I’m lazy.”

Did we mention that Waters confessed his love for “abortion movies” and Huppert reads “the good reviews” she gets? Maybe a dearth of material for Waters, but Huppert must have piles to go through.