The fearless French actor is known for playing powerful, complex women, mostly recently in Jean-Paul Salomé’s corporate drama La Syndicaliste. But she has her own way of balancing loyalty to film with her feminist principles
Isabelle Huppert has a way of inspiring intrigue – even without trying. On the red carpet at Cannes last month, she raised eyebrows with her choice of footwear: a pair of Balenciaga Anatomic heels, whose tips are moulded to look like human toes. It seemed like quintessential Huppert: an arch joke about the furore over the festival’s insistence on heels for women at events, rising above the idiotic dictate and the barefoot rebels who have recently flouted it.
Except apparently I’m overthinking it: “People were looking at my shoes?” asks the actor, in her soigné tones, on the phone from Paris. Yes, those weird ones with toes. “No, I wasn’t making any statement. Though they were very comfortable, so I was able to climb the steps very pleasantly.” She probably has that nonplussed expression she does so well. It seems very Huppert to deny everything, too.
