One of my most enjoyable cinema viewing experiences of last year wasn’t exactly of the transcendental kind. Sitting in Toronto in a multiplex for a Toronto International Film Festival press screening, I didn’t discover a new cinematic language or witness the emergence of a young, exciting talent. It was all about a familiar face. But Neil Jordan’s latest thriller, Greta, starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert as unlikely friends whose relationship soon turns unhealthy, made me jump in fright and laugh uproariously throughout its airtight 98-minute runtime—and had me once again marveling at the new kind of international stardom that Huppert has reached in the past few years. As the titular character, Huppert plays a camp parody of her most iconic roles. The lonely, elderly pianist Greta, who is in fact much less innocent than she seems, echoes the protagonist of Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher; her unreadable, always resting face could be that of the uncertain nun in Hal Hartley’s Amateur; and her sadistic, violent ways are unmistakably consonant with Huppert’s now iconic, Oscar-nominated turn in Paul Verhoeven’s 2016 film Elle. While Greta isn’t as masterful as those films—the ridiculous humor in this Single White Female–type film clearly isn’t always strictly intentional—it is nevertheless a deeply pleasurable watch for fans of Huppert and an interesting document of the reappropriation of this French legend’s very peculiar persona by mainstream American directors in the 21st century. Looking back at her 40-plus-year career, however, it seems only fair that such a unique talent, now aged 65, should intrigue Hollywood once again. From her very first film appearances in France, Isabelle Huppert established herself as a bold actress, willing to go to taboo places with unusual calm and confidence. A few TV movies were followed by a minor role, at 20, in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s 1974 explicit exploration of female sexuality, Glissements Progressifs du Plaisir. That same year, and more famously, Huppert played a bored good girl craving adventures in Bertrand Blier’s thoroughly problematic cult comedy film Les Valseuses, about two young men traveling around France to shoplift, steal cars, and have more or less consensual sexual encounters with women. Huppert’s teenager Jacqueline, in the middle of a family picnic, decides to elope with the strangers who stole her parents’ car and loses her virginity with all three of them. Acting alongside the great Miou-Miou, Patrick Dewaere, and a certain Gérard Depardieu, Huppert already showed a degree of comfort, maturity, and playfulness that exposed the power dynamics at the basis of sexual relationships. Jacqueline may be giving herself to strangers, but it is her decision to do so and she has full agency in the experience. The role that first put Huppert on the international map wasn’t so adventurous. She was nominated for a César and won a BAFTA award for her turn in Claude Goretta’s The Lacemaker (1977), playing a shy, cute but unremarkable young woman unable to change for the man she loves. Huppert made Pomme’s repression of emotions compelling to the audience even as it was frustrating to her lover. This ability to play the extreme of virginal purity, contrasting her sexual appetite in Les Valseuses, pointed at the particular aspect of life that the actress would become an expert explorer of in French cinema—namely, female sexuality and its unavoidable connection to power struggles. The great French director Claude Chabrol offered Huppert many opportunities to challenge the expectations placed upon women by (French) society, with films that employed both her highly naturalistic and internal acting style, and her steely beauty. “I play states of mind,” she recently told The Independent. “[C]haracter is a perception for whoever sees the film but not for myself. I don’t play a character. I just play an encounter between me and certain states of mind.” In both Violette Nozière (1978) and Une Affaire de Femmes (1988), Huppert’s cold attitude translates a strength of character in the face of the same sexual exploitation, presented in each film under a different guise. Violette rebels against her claustrophobic domestic life, while Marie in Une Affaire withholds her sexuality in order to avoid pregnancy and the constraints of motherhood, all the while practicing illegal abortions for other women. The same desire for independence—the same state of mind—guides the two women, and Huppert, with her natural collectedness, can portray them both just as convincingly because the quiet confidence of her characters is, first, her own. She can play virginal without being herself a saint, or voluptuousness despite not being traditionally sexy, because she trusts that her approach to acting allows her to portray all kinds of people. Sign up for the The Ringer Newsletter Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email (required) By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. Subscribe Huppert’s ease with both extremes of sexual expression led her to reunite with Depardieu in Loulou, Maurice Pialat’s 1980 masterpiece about a young wife, Nelly, beginning an unclear and frivolous relationship with the titular petty criminal. Pialat’s cinema was characterized by unconventionality and heartbreak (his 1972 semi-autobiographical tough watch We Won’t Grow Old Together couldn’t have had a more apt title) and it only makes sense that the already-transgressive Huppert would be a part of it. The dynamic she has with Depardieu is one of pure pleasure, with neither of their characters caring for the rules of behavior that couples are meant to obey, nor for the codes of conduct in the clubs and bars they visit. With Loulou, Nelly is allowed to, in essence, act like a man and redefines female sexuality in a more egalitarian fashion. When life inevitably catches up to them, Nelly and Loulou remain a team, at least for a while, knowing they can be free and alone together. Nelly’s lust for life unmistakably recalls that of Madame Bovary, the epitome of female dissatisfaction, whom Huppert portrayed in 1991, again for Chabrol. With her ability to stay in the uncomfortable space between sexual freedom and repression, Huppert gave such liminal characters a face. Huppert, in concert with these filmmakers, became a feminist axiom in the typically misogynistic 1980s. It was only a matter of time until Huppert’s affinity for sexually unconventional characters would catch the eye of foreign directors, in particular in Hollywood. The same year as Loulou, she appeared in Michael Cimino’s infamously difficult production Heaven’s Gate, playing Ella Watson, a Quebecois brothel owner. At some point, Ella is raped by and avenged by the film’s protagonists, James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) and Nathan D. Champion (Christopher Walken), her two love interests. But Ella also kills men herself, displays her body freely, and rides a carriage with a restlessness not typically granted to women: she wields a strong hand as a madam while overcoming her own abuse and trauma. Cimino fought for Huppert to be cast in the part, and it was one thing he was right to be stubborn about. Even if it is in more conventional and obvious terms (meet the New Hollywood, same as the old Hollywood), Huppert here again defies traditional definitions of femininity and female sexuality. After the disastrous reception of Heaven’s Gate, which essentially brought the New Hollywood to an end by scaring off producers from working with uncompromising auteurs, Huppert didn’t work in America again until Curtis Hanson’s erotic thriller The Bedroom Window (playing a French mistress) and more interestingly in Hartley’s 1994 indie classic, Amateur. Just as its title is a French word that has passed into English use, Huppert here plays Isabelle, her persona having gained more definition by the mid-’90s and ready to travel. The fictional Isabelle is a French nun trying to write a pornographic movie because the Virgin Mary told her that she should pursue her calling as a nymphomaniac—a sexually uncertain woman, torn between chastity and the erotic in an absurdly literal way. The low-budget Amateur isn’t as commercial as Heaven’s Gate at least aimed to be; its narrative includes a man with amnesia who may have been a pimp, and the woman he can’t remember having exploited all her life.<doc-sep>I’m Neil Jordan. I’m the director of “Greta.” Frances, played by Chloë Moretz, is a waitress in this New York restaurant, and she’s being pursued by this woman, played by Isabelle Huppert, called Greta. She becomes this clingy friend/monster. One of the final straws of Greta’s attempts to invade Frances’s life is when she books a table at the restaurant she works. “Is there a problem?” “Yes. This woman has been harassing me and you need to ask her to leave.” “I’m afraid she has a reservation.” “What kind of service is this?” So we designed the restaurant specifically around this scene — the shape of it, the table lights, the pools of light from above, and the mirrors. We wanted an environment where the traffic of the waiters to and fro the tables was fluid. We would allow for these long, fluid kind of shots. Everything was designed to kind of ratchet up the humiliation of the central character, Frances. [music] “I’ll start with the crab bisque and a small green salad.” “Why are you doing this?” “Because we have to talk.” “I have nothing to say to you.” The clothes that the central character, Greta, wears was extremely important. We had a lot of discussion about the costume — the sophistication, the Frenchness of it. We managed to get a great costume from Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel. Those elements really were the scene, you know? I mean, Isabelle’s sophistication, her Frenchness. “If you say so. Cherie — “ “Do not call me that.” “[speaking french]. It’s what you are, my darling.” And the fact that, at a certain point, she reveals herself to be Hungarian. - [speaking hungarian]. Because she is a character with about four different layers to her, and I suppose this is a scene where all those layers are expressed. She knows how to order a wine. She knows how to hold a table in a restaurant. She knows how to embarrass a maître d. At a certain point, she kind of reveals herself to be an absolute monster, which is the fun of the scene, which is the center of the character, really. You know, this monster that sits behind this Frenchness, this sophistication, this kind of politesse. [music] “The Chablis.” “May I? Mm, a bit like you. Promises a lot, then disappoints.” “O.K.” “I deserve better.” [glass shattering] [gasping] It’s also a very physical scene. And in scenes like this, people can get hurt. “ — to us.” “Are you a child?” “No. You’re the child. You need to mature. You need a mother to hold you. You lost someone, and you are afraid to love. We both know its true.” “Don’t you dare talk to me about my mother.” “Darling, don’t you understand? She had to die. (SHOUTING) She had to die for us to meet!” So I had to set up an environment and a context whereby she could express herself physically, throw things around, struggle with grown men. So, I mean, in this scene, the fact that she felt physically safe was tremendously important to her and to the scene itself, I suppose. [music] “Leave me alone!”<doc-sep>In “Greta,” a young woman finds a purse on the subway. Not only does Frances, the finder, seek out its owner — the creepy woman of the title — but she personally delivers the purse to her home and stays for tea. Why? “Where I come from,” says Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz), “that’s what we do.” Um, she’s from Boston. That the universally understood concept of “stranger danger” hasn’t resonated with Frances is just one of many preposterous things in director Neil Jordan’s laughable attempt at a psychological thriller. But wait — there’s more! Although Frances is a waitress, she and her yoga- and colonic-loving roommate, Erica (Maika Monroe), live in a sprawling Brooklyn loft with exposed brick and stunning fixtures. Meanwhile, jobless Frenchwoman Greta (Isabelle Huppert), owns a three-story freestanding house in Manhattan that looks like a seafarer’s vacation cottage. The premise is promising: After returning the handbag, Frances spends more and more time with Greta, who becomes a warm mother figure and confidant. But Frances soon stumbles on a disturbing secret: Greta has a cabinet full of identical purses that she plants all over the city to lure in gullible girls. Spooked, Frances makes her only sound decision in the movie: She’ll have no more contact, walks or pâté with Greta. But Madame continues to ring her constantly, and shows up at her workplace, apartment, bars and trains. The cops just shrug. Scary, no? It would be if it weren’t for the rotten acting, dialogue and score. Huppert, who recently appeared in a supernatural episode of Matthew Weiner’s “The Romanoffs,” is going through a freaky phase. Here, she leans on her inherent mystique, and performs with the stilted formality of someone reading off cue cards. She’s about as subtle as horseradish, and there’s not a single second where you believe Greta isn’t a crazed stalker. Moretz, meanwhile, acts like Little Red Riding Hood talking to her conspicuously hairy grandma — impossibly naive, and therefore dull and unbelievable. She’s a solid actress, but she shines best in indies or in parts with real edge. “Greta” is a camp-fest. Her absurd experiences are underscored by music that sounds like a xylophone being played with a sledgehammer. Filled with “Jaws”-y surprise moments, it’s less likely to elicit shivers than giggles. So does much of the dialogue. “My friends say I’m like chewing gum,” Frances tells Greta. “I tend to stick around.” Who are her friends? Hallmark card writers?<doc-sep>
Greta (2018 Movie) Close this dialog window Streaming Options Like one of those YouTube videos that recasts Love Actually or Mrs. Doubtfire as horror movies — but in reverse — Greta‘s first 20 minutes feel like a trick: Could this actually be the heartwarming story of a grieving girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) who finds solace in her new friendship with a middle-aged woman (Isabelle Huppert) just as lonely as she is? Or, as the trailer suggests, is it the gruesome fairytale of an innocent lured by scheming witch who hides her wickedness behind a French accent and a fetching collection of cardigans? The answer is a little bit of both, really, and then something else: a loony psychodrama so steeped in winking, twinkly-toed camp that it almost (almost!) escapes the leaden tropes of the genre. It all begins when Frances McCullen (Chloë Grace Moretz), freshly graduated from Smith and still mourning the death of her mother, finds an abandoned handbag on the subway; boxy and ladylike, its shiny clasp set in embossed leather. (Symbolism, they name is green snakeskin.) She wants to return the purse to its rightful owner because, she says earnestly, “Where I come from, that’s what we do.” “Okay, this is Manhattan,” her best friend (Maika Monroe) retorts. “You find a bag, you call a bomb squad.” Instead, Frances makes her way to the Brooklyn townhouse where Greta (Isabelle Huppert) offers her effusive gratitude, then tea; somehow, they leave with each other’s phone numbers and the promise to go dog-shopping for Greta, whose home is too empty since her husband died and her daughter went off to a music conservatory in Paris. Greta seems lovely; old-world elegant, gracious and kind. Spoiler: She’s a lunatic. And like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, she will not be ignored. Writer-director Neil Jordan has an Academy Award for 1992’s The Crying Game (its star, Stephen Rea, even drops in for a cameo) but he’s not exactly trawling in Oscar-y waters here. Greta is essentially a gleeful B-movie tricked out with A-level talent, which doesn’t mean it isn’t fun — at least until the whole thing essentially runs out of narrative road, and any semblance of new ideas. Even with two such gifted actresses at his disposal, once Jordan begins to bang the gong of Greta’s madness, there just aren’t many places for them both to go; Moretz mostly sucks in air, terrified, while Huppert is left with her one note to pluck: high C, for Crazy. The title role especially feels well below the pay grade of an actress who has spent so many years mastering the art of the Undone Woman onscreen (see: The Piano Teacher, Elle). But her Greta turns out to be the movie’s saving grace, too; a presence so fantastically bonkers — and so aware of the story’s mounting midnight-movie kitsch — that it hardly matters if you’ve seen it all done before, and better. B– Close this dialog window Streaming Options Related content: