“I’ve never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn’t choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.” — Juliette Binoche

Blue, d. Krzysztof Kieslowski (1993)

It’s her birthday today.

I first saw her in Unbearable Lightness of Being, so so many years ago, a frighteningly long time ago. There’s the scene where she and Daniel Day-Lewis have sex for the first time, and it’s clearly her first time. Her reaction to the sex was unlike any acting I had ever seen before. Was it pain? Ecstasy? Loss? Or all of the above? You see so many sex scenes and they don’t make you feel anything. This one felt REAL. I almost couldn’t even believe what I was seeing, it was so spontaneous and so beyond language. My boyfriend whispered, “WHO is THAT.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, d. Philip Kaufman (1988)

We clearly were not alone in our “WHO is THAT?” response.

It would be a long while before I saw Mauvais Sang, from 1986, pre-dating Unbearable Lightness of Being by two years. I saw them out of order. Unbearable Lightness of Being was her first English-language film (and she has said she was barely fluent at the time), but Mauvais Sang was an international arthouse hit. So she was on the rise … AND it would be indicative of her very special career, and how she has gone about her work: she does movies in French, she does movies in English, she does movies with new directors and also with legends. She takes chances. She goes back to the theatre often (she’s won a Tony), and is also involved in dance. She did not pull up stakes in France and put down stakes in California, like so many do. She went back and forth between the two. She would not be pinned down. She would not be trapped. And she didn’t have to develop INTO that kind of person. She was that way from the start (rare in someone so young).

In Mauvais Sang, Binoche is is so beautiful and vulnerable she stops your heart.

Mauvais Sang, d. Leos Carax (1986)

Mauvais Sang is a dream of a movie, and the parachute scene is one of the most perfect visual evocations of what it feels like to be in love.

Her career is the Platonic Ideal of doing whatever the hell you want to do. There have been no fallow periods, no “careerism”, no jostling to get that role that will win an Oscar nomination. She’s not doing it for those reasons. She doesn’t care about acclaim. She could not give a shit about any of the trappings. She collaborates with people she likes. She does bold experimental films – like Claire Denis’ 2018 High Life, in which she plays scenes where it is difficult to imagine any other actress going where she goes. Her collaborations with Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, have been fascinating, first in Shirin – a meditation on women’s faces – and then in Certified Copy, not only one of the best films of that year, but in the last 20, 25 years.

Shirin, d. Abbas Kiarostami (2008)

Certified Copy, d. Abbas Kiarostami (2013)

I have written about both those films:

Here’s the piece about Shirin (there’s no other movie like it).

And here’s the piece about Certified Copy, which I first saw at the New York Film Festival, and later during its run at the Film Forum.

There are so many roles I’m skipping over, like the one in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue, part of his gorgeous Three Colors trilogy.

Blue, d. Krzysztof Kieslowski (1993)

And then smaller American ensemble films like Dan in Real Life, where she is charming and adorable, funny, she’s quick in her responses, totally spontaneous, you never believe she’s anything other than who she says she is. Like, WHERE is the “acting”? With Binoche, you will not find it.

Dan in Real Life, d. Peter Hedges (2007)

I’d also like to point her performance in what is an extremely UN-ingratiating film about Rodin-lover-muse Camille Claudel, an incredible artist in her own right, who was confined to a mental institution in 1913, and never came out. Claudel died in 1943. The film takes place during a three-day period in 1915, early on in her confinement when she still had hope she would get out. It is a brutal film, physically and emotionally, and harrowing in its sense of helplessness and rage. I reviewed for Ebert.

Camille Claudel 1915, d. Bruno Dumont (2013)

Clouds of Sils Maria means so much to me, I’m almost afraid to see it again. I always think of Clouds of Sils Maria as “going with” Personal Shopper, also directed by Assayas and coming the following year, also starring Kristen Stewart, Assayas’ new muse. Stewart doesn’t exactly star in Clouds of Sils Maria – it’s a two-hander: Binoche and Stewart together, Binoche playing a famous actress, Stewart playing her capable assistant. Other characters come into play but the Main Event is this relationship between the assistant and the actress, who is preparing to play a role that terrifies her. I barely breathed when I saw it for the first time, it was so satisfying and fascinating and mysterious.

I did write about Clouds of Sils Maria here, if you’d like to take a look, and for sure if you haven’t seen it, I recommend it highly!

For Ebert, I’ve reviewed many films starring Binoche (or where Binoche has a cameo). She works SO MUCH and with such integrity. It’s such a great career. Here are the reviews, all of the films worth seeking out:

Review of last year’s – or maybe it was released this year – The Taste of Things, a miracle of a movie.

Review of Between Two Worlds

Review of the great Claire Denis’ Both Sides of the Blade

Review of Polina