The amazing Isabelle Huppert

I read La Dentelliere at university in 1979 and then attended a screening of the film which had come out only a couple of years before. I found the book's heroine annoyingly passive (I was less tolerant then) but enjoyed the fine acting of the young, beautiful and red-haired Isabelle Huppert. Twelve years later I took a class of Higher French pupils to see Madame Bovary and Huppert's performance as the self destructive Emma was riveting.

This evening I was at the GFT to watch La Ritournelle starring guess who? This time Isabelle Huppert played a farmer's wife suffering from empty nest syndrome who nips off to Paris for a couple of days. Various adventures ensue. She was as gorgeous as ever and I mused that although she looks distinctly younger than me, the amount of time that she has been acting in films must mean that she and I are about the same age. However when I got home I googled her and found that she is in fact ten years older than me! I was absolutely amazed - she looks way younger than her age. Most importantly though she is a great actress who grips the attention of the audience from start to finish of the film.