Isabelle Adjani

I bring to theater all my most secret sufferings
Truffaut wanted to seduce me, I left Godard's set

By Valerio Cappelli - The Corriere della Sera

‍

How did you choose the texts?

"There is the red thread of a universal story, like music, a secret that can only be shared in the intimacy of a theater. I will take the audience by the hand in an inner museum of mine, in search of what animates me as a woman and as an artist: Duras, Sagan, Laurens, Fleury..."

‍

Truffaut, bewitched from her, bombarded her with ardent letters. She was subjugated by them

"Truffaut was a graphomaniac. He wrote perhaps with the knowledge that his writings would reach posterity, his letters and notes were as delicate as his desires and obsessions, and they were part of his arsenal from seducer and he did not accept being resisted. He was trying to win you over with words before possessing you. In Adele H.'s diary are found phrases addressed to me. I was 19 years old and feared the power of men. For decades we young actresses have been conditioned from this warning: if you are not an object of desire and if the director has no sights on you, you have little hope of getting the part. Truffaut fascinated me with his love of cinema, which he passed on to me, but the girl I was to long resisted his charms."

‍

Her mother could not stand her acculturation

"She was a Bavarian Catholic, my father a non-practicing Muslim Algerian. They did not have the same codes to fit into French society where social classes did not mix. My mother called my father Jim and put his middle name, Chérif, in place of his first, Mohammed. He wanted to impose his vision on me, censoring my femininity. Reading Racine I found an escape to desires and passions. I loved the classics, dangerous in the eyes of my mother, who positioned herself in the mother-daughter rivalry to condemn my sentimental upbringing. For my parents, becoming an actress was the announcement of scandal since you put to bare your emotions."

‍

She to home was experienced as a betrayal...

"Yes, of family and traditions. I found myself in a small apartment in the run-down Parisian suburbs, with parents who could no longer say I love you to each other and who could not say I love you to their children. I was a hostage to their survival. I read novels in which the two of them could have been the main characters. He was 18, she was 25 and they ran away together, she with her heart to pieces, leaving behind two small children and a controlling ex-husband. Then Dad, who worked in a garage, breathing toxic fumes made him sick to to the point of disability, Mom didn't work, my brother lived in painful delinquency that plunged him into drugs and psychosis. I sacrificed big movies for their health, which was my priority. I became their personal first aid. But I couldn't save anyone. With psychoanalysis I tried to understand this family labyrinth. These are things I had never said and they marked me as an actress."

‍

In the imagination, she is the romantic and troubled heroine

"I'm a romantic and have played crazy women, but don't fall into the trap of believing that an actress blends in with the character. I have loved and been loved. My torments are no greater than those of other women. I have suffered from the narcissistic perversion of some men, you lose a lot of time when you get the wrong partner, and you lose your self-confidence."

‍

He once said that directors know how to make actresses suffer in order to get the painful and deep essence

"Today in France they are criticized and condemned methods. The butter scene and the traumatic experience she went through from Maria Schneider in Bertolucci'sLast Tango caused a scandal but above all it hurt the actress, who was not 20 years old, since it was imposed on her at the last without warning her. Her trust was violated. And this was so that the maximum of predatory violence could be seen. And one of the worst examples in the history of cinema. It is the glory of the nightmare, or the nightmare of glory, to filming her suffering."

‍

What he thinks about Depardieu's allegations of molestation

"Some women have denounced him and I support them in their search for truth. Valeria Golino said she was respected from Gérard and the same happened to me, she never had inappropriate gestures."

‍

She abandoned Godard's "Prénom Carmen" because her father was dying

"Leaving, I don't know if I was more Godardian than Godard. In the few days of filming, he had a from seductive attitude, with gestures to sometimes bordering on the obscene. He did not hesitate to lower his pants in front to of me, as if he might have sexual attraction. And the well-meaning French critics preferred to flog me. Yes, I took the risk of not honoring the appointment with the most revered New Wave man in the world."

‍

What stage of life is it in?

"It has to wait before I retire to the country. There is the imperative to embody beauty imposed on women. One scolded to Marilyn Monroe for being too fat, and the same happens to Kate Winslet, Monica Bellucci and Juliette Binoche. After MeToo, to 50 or 60 is not too old. Filmmakers today are right to be afraid of being accused of discrimination."

‍