Recently, I was lucky enough to meet the French actress Juliette Binoche in the Milan cinema "Godard". In her 62 years, she shot an impressive number of films (66) signed by Godard, Mal, Haneke, Minghella, Carax, Tessin, Leconte, Ferrara, Cronenberg, Gitai, Klapis, Assayas, Kieslowski, Dimon, Kiarostami, Denny... Tiny and quite inconspicuously dressed, smiling, her hair up in a messy bun, Juliet is a bit of a mangupche and a bit of a philosopher, in that irresistible way. french immense chalante way. She says that her emotions are most easily expressed in the cheek area, she still blushes when she is overcome with excitement.
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For me, she was the best in one of her early films Lovers from Pont Neuf a (1991), directed by her first husband, Leos Carax: an unusual love story about a young Parisian homeless couple, the painter who can't see in one eye and almost blind in the other, the acrobat whom no one has ever loved and who has trouble sleeping. That film was a financial flop. "Today, many people think in the way of American producers - the profitability of the film comes first, and only then comes art. In Europe, fortunately, the case is reversed - first art and then business," said Juliette and continued to talk:
"I spent my childhood in a boarding school, far from my parents, where I discovered acting. Acting was a joy, an escape from loneliness, from painful moments. In that school, I created a place where I could invent other lives and work and share something with others, that was very important to me. Later, I also learned acting from my mother, she let me play male roles, which is why today I have a balance of both male and female in me. My mother was that that she felt my fire, my passion for acting.
At the age of fifteen, I moved to Paris and continued with acting lessons. At the conservatory, I also started directing theater plays and graduated with one Ionesco play. When I played an abbess in a play by Alfred de Mize, the acting teacher Vera Greca impatiently took me back three times for a passage. I didn't know how to play it, I felt a great emptiness in my soul. For me, the path to acting was a path of learning and encountering my own being, what it means to be a human being. Actors are, in fact, philosophers incarnate because in the end it all boils down to questions about life. In that period, I thought that I belonged only to the theater and that was the only thing I wanted to do, I was not interested in film. But I still went to the casting, at the persuasion of a friend.
What was it like working with Jean-Luc Godard? I was 18 years old when I went to the casting for the film Hello Maria, and it consisted of me, completely naked, going around the table and reciting poetry. Godard was generous with finances, but as a director he was insecure, I was even a little afraid of him. It seemed to me that he was in search of some truth, but he did not know how to reach it. Working with him, I learned that I should never rely on the director but that I should always be ready.
At the beginning of the eighties, during the filming of the film Appointment Andrea Teshina, I was so shocked that after filming all the actors returned to their daily lives, unlike me who got a fever and a high temperature, I was sick for two weeks, I just couldn't imagine separating my life from the life on the set. My teacher Jean-Pierre Martineau told me that we all evolve through partings, and today I am aware that accepting a parting is in a way a care for one's own soul, apart from being a prerequisite for its development.
The fire you carry inside you is inexplicable, it is actually the need to give yourself, to share something with someone, to create. It is also a search for the truth, through feelings and sensations, and it should not be given by the determination of the will but by the transformation of one's own being. In all my films, I have played characters who are actually myself. It's all in us, we can be the worst people and angels at the same time, we just need to realize it. I never see the characters I portray as something outside of myself.
How much have I learned from others? A lot, but acting is connected with listening, observing, acting is sometimes beyond our understanding, I completely forget about myself in the act of acting. Every actor has his own method, but he is the best when he doesn't show that method.
Krzysztof Kieslowski? Ah, it was easy and joyful to work with him, we laughed a lot, he was a gentle pessimist, a passionate smoker, he made me repeat scenes five times. He knew nothing about acting, but he knew everything else about film.
Fame? Ah, it is not easy to learn to be modest, we must dare to do so. The need for fame is linked to the father figure. I needed success because of the validation of others. However, even in failure there is success, provided you learn something from it."
