Isabelle Huppert by Louie Banks and ES Magazine | BALENCIAGA A-Line Coat in white faux fur, £5,250 (balenciaga.com). PIERRE CARDIN Evolution sunglasses, £250, Pierre Cardin, 83 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris
(Picture: Isabelle Huppert by Louie Banks and ES Magazine)There is a noise Isabelle Huppert makes when she wants to communicate some - thing for which she can’t find the words. It’s a sharp noise, like a Kit Kat snapping, made by the tongue hitting the roof of the mouth, and it shall be rendered through - out this interview as ‘clack’.
The first Huppert clack comes seconds after we meet, on a warm July evening in a hotel in Paris’ 6th arrondissement. Removing her sun - glasses and settling on to the sofa, the legendary French actress orders a white wine and ‘some clack’, which our waiter correctly interprets to mean ‘olives and nuts and things’. During the course of our conversation, however, the clack takes on deeper meaning. Example: discussing whether the roles she plays stay with her after filming, Huppert says, ‘Maybe the characters stay in you. But as a thought, not like an invader that would’ — she mimes stran - gulation — ‘clack’. Another, on female film directors: ‘For women, you deal with the work, but you deal with everything else, too. There’s a sense you have to’ — she spins several invisible plates — ‘clack’.
