Isabelle Huppert on Her Rumored Feud with James Gray and Why Nicole Kidman Won Venice for ‘Babygirl’

Huppert talks to IndieWire about the connections between "Babygirl" and "The Piano Teacher" and addresses an alleged feud that occurred with fellow Venice juror James Gray at Cannes in 2009.

Watching “Babygirl” at the Venice Film Festival, I thought, “Isabelle Huppert is going to like this.” Here is a provocative movie, directed by Halina Reijn, starring Nicole Kidman as a corporate CEO engaging in kink and sexually submitting herself to a younger intern (Harris Dickinson). Kidman’s Romy cuts a powerful silhouette in the office by day, but by night, she’s on all fours being dominated in increasingly adventurous sexual encounters.

With Huppert as jury president, it was no surprise when Kidman won Best Actress, as Huppert famously stars in the darkly perverse “The Piano Teacher,” a movie Reijn’s script is surely in deep conversation with. In the 2001 Michael Haneke film, Huppert played a stoic music instructor who becomes sexually overpowered by a younger pupil (Benoît Magimel, not exactly a dead ringer for Dickinson in 2001 but they share an ethereal twink-y beauty). I went into “Babygirl” expecting the American version of “The Piano Teacher,” though Reijn’s film is more buoyantly sex-positive than sinisterly Freudian (“The Piano Teacher” is, remember, a film where Huppert’s character shares a bed with her mother, played by Annie Girardot).

Huppert shares a connection with Dutch “Babygirl” filmmaker Reijn, too. Reijn, also an actress, starred for theater director Ivo van Hove in a Netherlands stage adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s “Obsession” in 2017. She starred, too, in Paul Verhoeven’s 2006 Holocaust thriller “Black Book.” Huppert worked with van Hove for a stage production of “The Glass Menagerie” — also at International Theater Amsterdam — in 2021 and, of course, starred for Verhoeven in the role that earned Huppert her first Oscar nomination in 2016’s “Elle.”

“She has a way to show a woman not like a victim, but like a weak woman. She’s supposed to represent a certain idea of power, but she’s also weak, and I love that,” Huppert, who was at the New York Film Festival with Hong Sang-soo’s “A Traveler’s Needs,” told IndieWire during a recent interview at the L’Alliance French Cultural Center in Manhattan. She was dressed stunningly in a black Balenciaga jacket and skirt.

“You hear a lot about the way you should show women, like a winner, or [with] power,” Huppert said, “and I don’t think that’s the way it works. [Romy] is a woman of power but she’s also weak.”

Huppert and Kidman have never worked together, though there are clear parallels in their careers of taking on complex and multi-shaded women. “I know Nicole of course, but we live in two different countries and don’t have too many opportunities to meet, but I thought she was great, and very daring. She’s not afraid,” said Huppert. (Kidman could not attend the Venice awards ceremony due to the passing of her mother, but she’s in the process of mounting an Oscar campaign with A24 for “Babygirl,” releasing on Christmas.)

Alongside Huppert on the Venice jury this year were filmmakers including Agnieszka Holland, Andrew Haigh, and James Gray. There’s been a longstanding rumor (via World of Reel) that Huppert and “Armageddon Time” director Gray feuded while on the Cannes jury in 2009, where Huppert served as president and where her friend and dear collaborator Haneke won the Palme d’Or for “The White Ribbon.”

So the story goes, Huppert and Gray argued fervently over what film should win the top honor, with Huppert preferring Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” (another movie about a woman embracing the dark side of her sexuality) and Gray championing Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet.” Allegedly, Gilles Jacob, the Cannes president at the time, had to jump in to soothe both parties toward an entente. (It was rumored that Gray even called her a “fascist bitch,” with World of Reel pointing to a report from Le Figaro at the time.)

I asked Huppert if there was any truth to the story. She conceded that, yes, they disagreed, “But, well, we were again together. I never know how this happened because it was like a rumor. You don’t understand why it happens. Maybe sometimes James Gray is joking, and people take it [too seriously]. He has a great sense of humor, and people misunderstood that it was just a joke. We are good friends.”

IndieWire spoke to a representative for Gray, and the filmmaker confirms Huppert’s version of the story and that the two are on good terms.

As for how unanimous the jury was in its decisions to award films including Pedro Almdóvar’s “The Room Next Door” the Golden Lion and Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio” the runner-up prize, Huppert wouldn’t say exactly. “To choose is to renounce. We had 23 films, and only eight prizes, and in a way, they all deserved something,” Huppert said.

“A Traveler’s Needs” opens from Cinema Guild on November 22.