Juliette Binoche (Paris, 1964) passed through Malaga on a special day. It’s raining for the first time in several months and she, instead of frowning because the day is gray, smiles and celebrates: “It’s a gift from the gods, we need it”, she says, indifferent to the fact that four drops seem to change everything, even plans calculated down to the millimeter, in a thirsty city.
Sitting in the darkness of the lounge of a hotel in the center of Malaga, dressed in an elegant suit, Binoche confirms by her gestures, by what she says and by what she remains silent, that she is the type star that she seems to be. The others move around her as if in concentric orbits while she maintains her brilliance, affable and sometimes amusing.
His companions highlight his aura: a woman who does her hair, a man who hides a bulb which steals his light, and who is now preparing to set a limit: last question. “Quickly, don’t worry: ask me more things,” she will say later, taking advantage of the fact that the other has moved away again. She also firmly defends her territory, which today is that of words: she does not want photos during the interview because they distract her from the answers, which she shapes with patience and precision. She only acknowledges the presence of the journalist and the interpreter who accompanies her today, Isabel Moyano.
The French actress is the closest thing to a star of European cinema, or auteur cinema, whatever that means. At sixty, her filmography includes works by David Cronenberg, Jean Luc Godard, André Techiné, Louis Malle, Isabel Coixet and Leos Carax, and a handful of roles that endure: that of Julie, the composer mourning her death. daughter and her husband in a car accident, Three colors: blue. (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993); that of a nurse in a Tuscan monastery during the Second World War, in The English patient (Anthony Minghella, 1993); that of a suffering woman Hidden (Michael Haneke, 2005).
Binoche is the only actress to have received an Oscar, a César, a Bafta and acting prizes awarded by the three major European film festivals: Cannes, Venice and Berlin. In 2022 he received the Donostia Prize of the San Sebastian Festival and last year the Goya International. And now she has passed through Malaga to collect another from the hands of her friend Ángela Molina: the Honorary Prize of the French Cinema Festival, organized by the Alliance Française, which thus rewards an “essential” figure for development French-speaking cinema. and its dissemination of French culture.
This whole series of rewards has reinforced the awareness that his ascendancy carries great responsibilities. We are “politicians without borders”, he declared several times. His work, he says, “has the chance to change lives” because it is a kind of healing therapy for the soul. Juliette Binoche chose to be an actress because she couldn’t be anything else.
The other day I saw your speech again during the collection of the international Goya in 2023. You said some very beautiful and profound things about the profession of interpreter. She said it was a recognition of the ardent desire that invades him, but which does not belong to him. “I am only an instrument of this burning desire, a tool.” What is an actor or actress for? Where does your desire to act come from?
[Sonríe, duda. Mastica la respuesta] I can’t explain it. But I can say that I grew up in a family of artists who had experienced the war and emigrated from Poland… My grandparents lost everything. And my mother’s desire to be an artist was very, very strong. This wish did not entirely come true as she had her children quite early. And when he suggested, for example, that we go to a concert, read a book or do theater, I always said yes. For me, it was a solution to my inability to enter into the school dynamic, from an academic point of view. I didn’t go to school at the same time as everyone else, nor did I learn to read at the same time… I was isolated. And that meant an open door to a free world! Fun, free… Creative… I could… Ah! Be free. It was the circumstances of my upbringing, but also my thirst for life and the fact of having had a difficult childhood, which made the exit towards an artistic path a way of surviving and of expressing things which were not not expressed before. In difficult and suffering childhoods, this is absolutely necessary.
You are an actress, but you also sing, paint and write poetry. Is the performer also an author?
Yes of course. This is the continuation of the writing. The author writes from a sensation, an emotion, an idea that comes and sinks into his heart through writing. And a performer takes what is written and conveys it through their heart to the camera.
If you look back, you have a storied career: awards, work with the most prestigious directors, with roles that many remember, and respect in the industry. Did you always choose where you wanted to go?
You must work with intuition, with what is important in your heart. We can say no to things that seem magnificent, brilliant, but there must be a real connection with desire, with what is important deep in the heart. You can’t stop deciding. Because afterwards, there are no regrets. No regrets! If you chose from a true feeling, you can never doubt the purpose of what you did.
An important decision came to you when you had to choose between Jurassic Park And Three colors: blue.. They almost constitute a paradigm of different ways of understanding cinema. But he explained on occasion that he had already committed to Kieslowski. Do you think your career would have changed if the decision at this crossroads had been different?
No, because in Jurassic Park the important thing was the dinosaurs, while in Blue it was the people! And I chose people! Even though I really like animals. Let’s see, if I had nothing else to do, of course I would have done it! I would have had a lot of fun working with Spielberg! Wait ten o’clock in the caravan, come out and ask if everything is okay… [gesticula, ríe a carcajadas].
He says he is interested in the roles the character transforms into. And how do your characters influence you?
A film is an immersion. In a universe, in its circumstances, in a story, among people, in a friendship, in emotional situations… So it inevitably makes you think and evolve. Look, there are differences between therapy and the art form. In therapy, we try to change behavior. In a role, the actor, when he sees that there is behavior like that, says thank you. They are two different things, but they are not totally separate, because it is psychology. We do not study psychology, but we maintain a relationship with its essence, with psychological experience. In a way, the depth of things makes me think.
In what sense?
When I made the film with John Boorman [Un país en África, 2004]I worked with a coach American, black, on racism, on my character. And I said to myself, “Juliette, I’m not racist.” But when we work with the character and with the coach, I realized he had a racist past that I wasn’t aware of. So !
The festival says that you are an “indispensable” figure to the development of French-speaking cinema, and it is almost a commonplace to describe you as one of the great stars of “auteur cinema”. Do you feel like you represent a way of making films? In a way of understanding culture? What responsibility does this imply?
I believe that all actors and actresses are responsible for their choices and what they emanate from people’s consciousness. It’s an important act, and you have to know how to be responsible for it. I’ve felt this for quite some time, not making choices solely based on what you like, because you have to be aware that these choices will have an impact. Now, sometimes I try not to think about it too much, because the important thing is to live freely. If we always think about our image, about a representation, we cease to be artists. For this, let’s do an Artificial Intelligence and I multiply in my interviews. No! We must question ourselves, change, because the values of today are not those of tomorrow. That’s why sometimes when interviews say to me “did you say this or that”, I tell them no, I didn’t say that or I question it, because we don’t look like we will be in ten or twenty years.
Just a few months ago, she signed a manifesto demanding more action against sexual violence against women in cinema, coinciding with the latest edition of the Cannes Film Festival, where nine women They accuse Alain Sarde, a renowned producer. What part of the iceberg have we seen so far and what can the industry do to combat these behaviors?
There are things to do now. The first thing is that the laws are applied, because there are many cases that are not tried. I think that in Spain the laws have been changed very firmly and there is less sexual abuse in the family environment. In France it’s much more lax, there was a time when we thought that everything was allowed, including in the cinema. I think there is an awareness, which is difficult for men, who feel lost and attacked, but I think it is important that they realize that there are things that are not not tolerable. We are forced to suppress consciousness in order to evolve.
