Having had a career that’s spanned over 50 years, Isabelle Huppert knows a thing or two about cinema. She’s done epic westerns like “Heaven’s Gate” and erotic dramas like “The Piano Teacher,” worked with legends like Jean-Luc Godard and Paul Verhoeven, but no matter the genre or person behind the lens, Huppert thinks her work is best seen, as intended, on the big screen. Ahead of serving as Jury President at the 81st Venice Film Festival this week, Huppert spoke to The New York Times for a recent interview, in which she shared her appreciation for what festivals offer to cinema’s lasting health and her optimism for the medium’s future.
“Festivals are more and more important,” Huppert said. “We all know that with the development of new ways of watching movies such as streaming platforms — which do have their virtues — movie theaters are somewhat threatened. So festivals are crucial ecosystems for the visibility of movies and for the film industry as a whole.”
Going further, she added, “They’re a rendezvous with cinema, where movies are screened in the best possible way, and they showcase different categories of films. To me, they’re instrumental.”
Starting on August 28 and continuing for the next 10 days, Huppert and her jury will be screening almost two dozen films before handing out the Golden Lion. In speaking on what makes Venice so special, Huppert claimed it was the “magical setting,” which she thinks adds to the “overall magic of the event.”
While Venice may serve as a cinematic utopia for a brief period of time, the overall future of the theatrical experience is no less in question, as movie theaters continue to struggle in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic with both streaming and a contracting industry putting out less product. However, Huppert isn’t fretting too much, even though she’s directly effected by the situation.
“I would like to stay optimistic,” she said to The New York Times. “My family and I look after two small art house movie theaters in Paris: the Christine and the Écoles. Paris remains a very privileged city in terms of movie theaters.”
When pressed on the subject, with the internet and the ease of staying at home cited as reasons for abandoning theaters, Huppert’s support for cinemas remained steadfast. She said, “I believe people will still have a passion for going to the movies. One can sometimes ask oneself whether cinema is an everlasting art form and whether people will continue to go to the movies. My inclination would be to say yes.”
