Bloomsbury Academic Isabelle Huppert: Stardom, Performance, Authorship

Featuring a lineup of distinguished academics, this collection remedies the absence of scholarly attention to French cinematic legend Isabelle Huppert. This volume deconstructs Huppert’s star persona and public profile through critical and theoretical analysis of her various screen roles―from her very early appearances alongside Romy Schneider in César et Rosalie (Sautet, 1972) and Gérard 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 François Ozon. Known for a cerebral internalization of characterization, a technical mastery of extreme emotions, and a singular brand of icy intellectualism, Huppert’s 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 Huppert’s 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. Review This book assembles a brilliant cast of scholars to reflect on the complex meanings and effects of Isabelle Huppert’s prolific career and compelling star persona. The diversity of critical approach illuminates Huppert’s 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 About the Author Nick Rees-Roberts is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the Université 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).