Aeroflot_Style_October_2012

108
english summary
Not with
a bang,
but a
whimper
text > Tatiana Aleshicheva
During her 40-year
career as an actor,
Isabelle Huppert
has played almost
100 roles, but almost
none of them in
comedies. Small,
red-haired, and
freckled, she has
a fragility which
seems made
for drama of a special
kind — drama
in which lives
are made or broken
in silence, without
hysterical shouting
or hand-wringing
Isabelle Huppert played her first role
of note in César et Rosalie (1972). From
the very beginning she had, it seems,
no desire to be a diva. Her family was welloff
and her motivation for becoming an
actress was neither money nor,
surprisingly, fame. She has always kept
herself to herself, avoiding society events,
and has appeared in public only when
pressured to do so by producers anxious
to promote a film. Her father owned
a factory that made safes (prompting
journalists to joke that Huppert is as hard
to open as one of her father’s products).
A brilliant intellectual who has
interviewed the philosopher Jean
Baudrillard, she is reluctant to give
interviews herself and categorically
dismisses all questions about her personal
life. And although she has played
alongside all the best actors in France,
she has never been the subject of anything
resembling a scandal. As a child, Huppert
was first encouraged by her parents to play
the piano, then learnt Russian at
university, but followed this by falling in
love with acting. She began playing in TV
films, but her career only took off when
she had several small roles in succession
in films with outstanding directors.
In Bertrand Blier’s Les Valseuses (1974),
where Gérard Depardieu and Partick
Dewaere play two scoundrels who chat up
every woman in sight, Isabelle Huppert is
a Daddy’s girl who runs away from home
in order to leap into the arms of these
butch strangers. Her character is a virgin,
but not in the least bit shy; she is in a hurry
to fling off the burden of her innocence —
and the insolent young men are quick to
oblige. Huppert’s portrayal of a
contradictory mixture of naivety and
shamelessness is so convincing that her
role, although minor, made a lasting
impression.
The title role in Claude Goretta’s The
Lacemaker (1977) posed Huppert an
interesting challenge: how to play a girl
who is nothing special, but in such a way
as to create a stir? Her character is a timid
ingénue who learns the art of love from
her saucy older girlfriend. When she
meets a student while on holiday, he
becomes her first boyfriend. But in time
the love between them withers, choked
by the banalities of everyday life. This story
of a gently breaking heart proved a
turning point in Isabelle Huppert’s career,
getting her noticed by Claude Chabrol,
the New Wave film director whose films
explore the vices that lie concealed
behind the tasteful veneer displayed by
the wealthy bourgeoisie.
АЭРОФЛОТ•STYLE
Isabelle Huppert received her first Best
Actress award at Cannes for her role in
Chabrol’s Violette Nozière (1979), the
true story of a famous poisoner. In 1934,
in order to steal money for her worthless
lover, 18-year-old Violette poisoned her
own parents, cunningly taking advantage
of the fact that she had been discovered
to have syphilis: she managed to explain
this result of her sexual activities
by claiming that she had inherited
the disease from her parents; and then,
under guise of medicine, she slipped
them a fatal dose of sleeping pills. But her
mother survived, and Violette was sent
to prison for 15 long years.
Fame came to Huppert quite out of the
blue, and she, always the model of
restraint, simply brushed it off, continuing
to avoid noisy parties and to select scripts
on the basis of who was to be the director.
“There’s only one risk an actor takes,” she
has said. “And that’s agreeing to work with
a bad director. So I choose the best — such
as Chabrol and Haneke. I should also say
that acting is over-valued as a profession:
actors are spoiled by too much applause.
But what do we risk when we appear
on the screen? Exposing our naked breasts
to the camera?” Huppert has always
undressed on screen as naturally as a
model posing for art students. She has
never been a conventional beauty, but
directors have often exploited the fact that
men find her hypnotizing. In Michel
Deville’s Eaux Profondes her husband
(Jean-Louis Trintignant) furiously kills all
her lovers, but in the mornings behaves
towards her with impeccable courtesy,
bringing her coffee in bed.
Huppert’s most provocative role, however,
was given her by Michael Haneke in The
Piano Teacher (2001). Bullied by her
domineering mother and forced to bang
out odious classical music on the piano
with her pupils, her character suppresses
her own sexuality for years before it finally
erupts in aggression towards her lover and
masochism towards herself. “Sex is a way
of controlling your life, but it’s also a way
of losing control over it,” Huppert has
said. Typically, in this role her heart breaks
quietly – not with a bang, but a whimper.
Isabelle Huppert’s personal life continues
to provide scant food for gossip. For the
last 30 years she has lived with her civil
partner, by whom she has three children.
She is fond of TV series and football, does
not drive, and does not use a computer.
In her work she continues to stick to her
favourite principle: to appear only in films
by the best directors.
АЭРОФЛОТ•STYLE
Stock centre
text > Anastasia Kiseleva
‘Stockholm syndrome’ – the term that describes
the emotional attachment captives sometimes
form to their captors – can also be translated
into the language of fashion. The Stockholmers
might be unlikely to admit to being fashion
victims, but the sheer number of designer shops
in the city is a sign that they have lost their
former freedom
Just a few years ago, the idea of visiting
Stockholm for the weekend to stock up
on clothes would have seemed ridiculous.
By lunchtime on Saturday even H&M had
closed, and on Sundays the only hope
was souvenir stalls on Drottninggatan.
But now the shops are open 7 days
a week, and fashion design falls within
the scope of Swedish national interests.
If you stay at the Grand Hotel – as you
should for its recently redesigned rooms
and Mathias Dahlgren’s Michelin-starred
restaurant – don’t fail to visit the spa:
the Arctic Massage will take away not just
your stress, but also two centimetres from
around your waist. From here it’s just a
stone’s throw to Norrmalmstorg, which
has the largest Acne store in the city.
This shop is in a bank building which
is famous for being the scene of a bank
robbery where the hostages ended up
sympathizing with their captors (hence
the term ‘Stockholm syndrome’).
Leading off upwards from this square
is Biblioteksgatan, where all the most
important designers have boutiques.
In Filippa K severe dresses are sold
by the kindest female sales assistants
imaginable. On the corner with
Mastersamuelsgatan is a two-storey COS;
opposite is a tiny Byredo perfume
boutique. Nearby are Whyred and Fifth
Avenue Shoe Repair (intricate dresses
and an albino sales assistant all in black,
a perfect illustration of what this brand
is about). On Jakobsbberggatan, which
is parallel to Mastersamuelsgatan, there
is Rodebjer, which offers flower prints
that seem excessively bold for Stockholm.
Nearby is the new MOOD department
store with clothes, design, and food that
is every bit as good as the former (try
tapas at Boqueria or organic smoothies at
Juiceverket). At PUB on Hötorget don’t
miss Aplace, a multi-brand store where
you can pick up a pair of clogs from
Swedish Hasbeens. Apart from anything
else, PUB is a place of historic interest.
Greta Garbo worked in the department
store and Lenin, on his way from
Switzerland to Russia, dropped in and
found just the cap he was looking for.
In Södermalm, a district in the south
of Stockholm, you will find some
interesting small shops with clothes by tyro
designers, as well as good secondhand
shops (from a branch of London’s Beyond
Retro to tiny places selling vinyl records
and gothic underwear). The inhabitants
of Södermalm, and in particular SoFo,
its bohemian part, look as if there has
been no such thing as fashion for the last
40 years. You’ll find papas pushing
pushchairs in which they were probably
pushed themselves when they were
a child. At Pärlans Konfektyr girls with
babette hairstyles make toffees with
the taste of your own childhood. A box
of sweets done up in ribbons in the
colours of the Swedish flag makes a good
souvenir. The main thing, though,
is to get here before everything closes
on Sunday. Otherwise, you’ll end up stuck
with whatever you can find on
Drottninggatan.
109