Isabelle Huppert
The French actress makes her American stage debut in her performance of Sarah Kane's (almost) one-woman show '4.48 Psychose'
By Melissa Silvestri
Published: October 25th, 2005 | 8:46am
Isabelle Huppert is one of France’s finest actresses, and though she appears to look very plain, there is wryness and dark sensuality behind her knowing stare. She is noted for playing deeply disturbed characters that are often stuck in soul-draining maternal situations. Among her many roles, she has played a housewife who performs abortions during WWII in Story Of Women (a.k.a. Une Affaire De Femmes), a sexually sadistic piano teacher in La Pianiste, an ex-nun-turned-porn writer in Amateur, and most recently, a nihilistic rebel philosopher in I Heart Huckabees.
Now she has come to the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) Harvey Theater in Brooklyn to make her American stage debut in British playwright Sarah Kane’s controversial “4.48 Psychose,” a nearly one-woman show meditating on suicide, death, anger, and frustration. Kane, who committed suicide shortly after writing the play in 1999 at age 28, said of her show, “It’s about a psychotic breakdown and what happens to a woman’s mind when the barriers which distinguish between reality and different forms of imagination completely disappear.”
Although Kane wrote the show in English, it was translated into French by Michael Bugdahn with occasional English subtitles by Mike Sens. The subtitles are used as a guiding tool, like CliffsNotes for non-French speakers, but the audience is expected to understand enough French to get most of the story. One joke that non-French speakers might miss is when the main character says that the doctor told her she had seven minutes to live, but she had been previously been in the waiting room for a half hour.
However, there was many a French-speaking person in this packed house on a Sunday afternoon, for Mme. Huppert is the equivalent of Susan Sarandon in her home country. Huppert stood in one spot on a bare stage for an hour and a half, wearing a blue shirt and leather pants, looking open and stripped, her face bearing little makeup underneath the hot spotlights. She held the audience in rapture, delivering a staccato of lines ranging from blunt (“Fuck you, God, for making me feel this way”) to somber (“I have no desire for death / no suicide ever had”). Huppert’s character occasionally communicates with two characters, an inquisitive doctor and a past lover — both played by Gérard Watkins, who stands behind the transparent screen onstage dressed in red and orange.
“Ask me why,” she demands. “ASK ME!”
“Why did you cut your arm?” he replies.
“Because it felt fucking incredible,” she answers.
Huppert’s voice goes through the monologues without an intermission or a drink of water, just a quick rest of the vocal cords in between segments. Her voice delivers the words in a crisp and clear voice, occasionally screaming a phrase like “I KNOW!” and repeating the word honte, which means “shame” in French. By the end of the show her voice sounded drained of life, matching Kane’s words of defeat, sadness, and frustration. “The attraction to death is the reverse of this incredible hunger for life,” Huppert said in a Village Voice interview. “It’s an awareness of how difficult it is to fulfill the desire for life. The play constantly plays on these contradictions, which is why I like the idea of dying standing, because in a way that’s what she does: she dies alive.”
Huppert’s honesty and rawness in her performance resonated deep within the audience. Even if one doesn’t know French, the pain and anguish of the words will pull you in. The work is so emotionally exhausting that it has caused Huppert to shake onstage throughout the show and her eyes to well up with tears, exposing a vulnerability that’s a far cry from her usual roles as detached seductresses and ravaged mothers.
It is regrettable that Sarah Kane, now most well known as a suicide casualty whose work drove her to desperation, did not live to see her show given this immense respect and fortitude. At least now the magnitude of her work can be appreciated as it’s performed in Paris, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn, all by a woman who has redefined her own work and striking style 30 years into her career.
Issue #24
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