How Isabelle got her groove back

>> French actress Isabelle Huppert is the older woman in The School of Flesh

by MATTHEW HAYS

Isabelle Huppert doesn't appear too open to questions, despite the fact that this is an interview. The veteran French actress has been brought to Montreal as part of the Cinemania Film Festival, an event set up specifically to showcase French films with English subtitles.

Before being escorted to her Ritz Carlton hotel room, I'm asked not to bring up a few things: Huppert's notorious phobias or any issues surrounding her family. I hadn't heard about any of this, but promise not to bring any of them up during the interview or to discuss them anywhere else.

Huppert is plugging her latest film, titled The School of Flesh (L'École de la chair), which will appear as part of Cinemania's lineup. In it, she plays an older woman drawn to a young hustler (Vincent Martinez); the two meet up in a nightclub and soon find themselves obsessed with each other. He tells her not to pay for their first night of passion together; she insists. It's full of that generation-gap angst we see so much of in films about older women and younger men (but we never seem to see it the other way around).

No, Huppert doesn't think this role was risky, nor does she consider herself influenced by feminism (that's a weird question, she says), doesn't think there's much of a disparity between the treatment of actors and actresses as they age (that's a media-created brouhaha) and doesn't have a personal favourite film.

Having worked on both sides of the Atlantic--with French director Claude Chabrol on five films and also with American directors like Michael Cimino and Hal Hartley--Huppert does see a difference in cinematic technique. "American filmmakers will tend to rehearse. We would rarely rehearse before a film in France, it's better to arrive fresh. I'm not saying they're wrong, it's simply another way to do it."

Having started film work at the tender age of 16, Huppert soon rose to star status in France, and many expected her talent and camera-rich good looks to carry her to stardom in America. But her forays into American film were largely forgettable. She appeared in the Hitchcock hommage The Bedroom Window with Steve Guttenberg. She played a nymphomaniac nun in Hal Hartley's Amateur, an interesting film but one seen primarily on the arthouse circuit. Her first big-budget film was Heaven's Gate, the now-legendary flop. The film closed in many cinemas the same week it opened and was credited with bringing down the United Artists studio. "It was a disappointment. I just went back to France to work, so it wasn't such a big deal for me. It was more of an issue for Michael Cimino. I was more interested in why the film got rejected that much. Now it's been reclaimed by a lot of people."

The School of Flesh screens as part of the fourth annual Cinemania Film Festival, November 5­15. Info: 878-0082