Isabelle Adjani

ADJANI INTERVIEW — 27/06/2024, Corriere della Sera

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Valerio Cappelli: “How did you choose the texts?”

Isabelle Adjani: “there is the red thread of a universal story, like music, a secret that can only be shared in the privacy of a theater. I will take the audience by the hand in my inner museum, in search of what animates me as a woman and as an artist: Duras, Sagan, Laurens, Fleury..”

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V.C: “Truffaut, bewitched by her, bombarded her with fiery letters. She was subjugated by it.”

I.A: “Truffaut was a graphomaniac. Perhaps he wrote with the knowledge that his writings would come to posterity, his letters and cards were as delicate as his desires and obsessions, and were part of his seductive arsenal and he did not accept being resisted. He tried to win you over with words, before he possessed you. In the diary of Adele H. you can find sentences addressed to me. I was 19 years old and feared the power of men. For decades, we young actresses have been conditioned by this warning: if you are not an object of desire and if the director has no sights on you, you have little hope of playing the part. Truffaut fascinated me with his love for cinema, which he transmitted to me, but the girl I was for a long time resisted his charm.”

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V.C: “His mother couldn't stand her acculturating herself.”

I.A: “She was a Bavarian Catholic, my father a non-practicing Algerian Muslim. They didn't have the same codes to adapt to French society where social classes didn't mix. My mother called my father Jim and put his middle name, Chérif, in place of his first name, Mohammed. He wanted to impose his vision on me, censoring my femininity. Reading Racine I found an escape from 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 education. For my parents, becoming an actress was the announcement of scandal because emotions are exposed.”

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V.C.: “She had experienced it as a betrayal at home...”

I.A: “Yes, of family and traditions. I found myself in a small apartment in the infamous Parisian suburbs, with parents who can no longer say I love you and who cannot say I love you to their children. I was a hostage to their survival. I was reading novels in which the two of them could have been the protagonists. He was 18, she was 25 and they ran away together, her with a broken heart, leaving two young children and a despotic ex-husband. Then dad, who worked in a garage, breathing toxic fumes became ill until he became disabled, mom didn't work, my brother was living in a painful delinquency that plunged him into drugs and psychosis. I sacrificed great movies for their health, which was my priority. I became their personal first aid. But I couldn't save anyone. With psychoanalysis I have tried to understand this familiar labyrinth. These are things that I had never said and that have marked me as an actress.”

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V.C: “In the imagination she is the romantic and tormented heroine.”

I.A: “I'm a romantic and I've played crazy women, but don't fall into the trap of believing that an actress is confused with the character. I loved and I was loved. My torments are no greater than those of other women. I have suffered from the narcissistic perversion of some men, a lot of time is wasted when a wrong partner is made, and self-confidence is lost.”

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V.C: “He once said that directors know how to make actresses suffer to obtain the painful and profound essence.”

I.A: “Today in France, methods are criticized and condemned. The butter scene and the traumatic experience experienced by Maria Schneider inUltimo tango Di Bertolucci caused a scandal but above all it hurt the actress, who was not 20 years old, since she was forced to the last one without warning her. His trust was violated. And this was to see the maximum of predatory violence. It's one of the worst examples in movie history. It is the glory of the nightmare, or the nightmare of glory, that films his suffering.”

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V.C: “What do you think of Depardieu's accusations of harassment?

I.A: “Some women have reported it and I support them in their search for truth. Valeria Golino said she was respected by Gérard and the same thing happened to me, she never made inappropriate gestures.”

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V.C: “She abandoned Godard's 'Prénom Carmen' because her father was dying.”

I.A: “Going away, I don't know if I was more Godardinian than Godard. In the few days of shooting, he had a seductive attitude, with gestures sometimes bordering on obscene. He didn't hesitate to pull down his pants in front of me, as if he might have a sexual attraction. And the right-thinking French critic preferred to whip me. Yes, I took the risk of not honouring the appointment with the most revered Nouvelle Vague man in the world.”

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V.C.: “What phase of life are you in?”

I.A: “You have to wait before I retire to the countryside. There is the imperative to embody beauty imposed on women. Marilyn Monroe was reprimanded for being too fat, and so did Kate Winslet, Monica Bellucci and Juliette Binoche. After MeToo, at 50 or 60 you are not too old. Today, directors do well to be afraid of being accused of discrimination.”

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