Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

A French dream

A decade after her Oscar-winning performance in The English Patient, Juliette Binoche chats to Robin Lynch about her latest film, Breaking and Entering

French beauty and English craft is the combination on everybody’s lips – and it’s not just car manufacturers who are profiting. When Juliette Binoche collected an Academy Award for Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient in 1997 it was the first time a French actress had won an Oscar for 37 years.

Now Minghella and Binoche are back with Breaking and Entering, also featuring Minghella’s male muse Jude Law. Reuniting with his favourite stars, Breaking and Entering is also a homecoming for Minghella, the director of the British Film Institute (BFI). While he still has an eye for the picture-postcard glamour that made both The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain so visually stunning, he’s not afraid to shoot the seamier side of London.

Law plays Will, a yuppie architect whose state-of-the-art office in Kings Cross – the centre of Europe’s most ambitious inner-city regeneration project – attracts the attention of young thief Miro (Rafi Gavron). A series of events interweave the lives of the two men with a variety of other characters, including Miro’s Bosnian mother, Amira (Binoche).

At the Toronto International Film Festival a fresh-faced, newly blonde Binoche explains that her latest role involved a research trip to Sarajevo. “It was overwhelming,” she says. “You try to understand why all this horror happened. These people were living together. The Orthodox church was next to the Catholic church, the temple, the mosque – what happened? For four years people were prisoners of a massacre. Even 10 years later the trauma is still there. As an actress I just took it all in. I had to.”

In Breaking and Entering Amira and Will start a tense affair, which is unsurprising if you look back over Binoche’s career. Indeed it’s hard to imagine a film starring Juliette Binoche that doesn’t involve a love affair and usually these relationships head somewhere dark and tragic, as in Les Amants du Ponts-Neuf or The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But then Binoche has a melancholy beauty, which is a breed apart from the size-zero starlets in Hollywood’s lower ranks, and her allure is often compared to that of Greta Garbo.

It was this mixture of beauty and melancholy that Binoche used to dramatic effect in The English Patient. She played a nurse recovering from the death of her lover during World War II while tending to a dying man. Her performance won her the only Oscar for acting among the film’s nine statuettes. This was something of a surprise considering she was up against Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall. In her acceptance speech the somewhat stunned Binoche gasped: “I don’t have a speech prepared. I thought Lauren would get it. I think she deserves it. It’s like a dream. A French dream.” Reflecting upon her moment of glory she now recalls: “It brought joy to me. I didn’t expect the Oscar and so it was a big surprise. It is so abstract to act, so to have the Oscar makes it feel more concrete.”

Though the French are notorious for their rejection of Hollywood, her fellow citizens reacted to her win with pride, and Binoche was treated like “a football hero”. Indeed, so positive was the response that she focused on French films for a while “probably because of guilt”.

In 2000 Binoche returned to the international scene in Chocolat, filmed in France and England. She played a single mother who scandalises a small French village when she opens a chocolate shop. The role earned her a second Oscar nomination.

Though Binoche has played many romantic roles she’s reluctant to perceive herself this way. “I played a kleptomaniac in Bee Season – that’s not very romantic!” she says. “I’ve never thought of myself as a romantic actress. I go with the wind and see where it sends me.”

Romantic actress or not, Binoche has consistently found romance in the movie industry. She dated Leos Carax, who directed her in Mauvais Sang and Les Amants du Ponts-Neuf, and in the 1990s she had a three-year relationship with Olivier Martinez, her co-star in Le Hussard sur le Toit. More recently she dated actor Mathieu Amalric.

Although this great screen lover has never married, perhaps because both her mother and grandmother were divorcees, Binoche has a 13-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter. Despite coming from a creative family (her mother was an actress, her father a sculptor and director) Binoche is careful to keep her work separate from her family life.

She’s also keen to introduce her children to other arts so they don’t feel pressurised to follow in her footsteps. “I started them playing the piano this year.

They don’t have to compete with me because I’m so bad. My daughter is more artistic and my son is more of a scientist. He loves to draw but is also interested in how things work. He’s amazing. He’s a killer chess player!”

Though she finds it hard juggling her work and her family life, there is at least a certain amount of crossover in Binoche’s upcoming roles. She dyed her hair blonde to star in Orsay, a series of films celebrating the anniversary of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the city where she was born. “I’m working with a Chinese director called Hsiao-hsien Hou. I play a mother who’s an artist involved with puppets and has her own little world. There is a trauma between her passion and the reality of her family life because her husband is not around.”

Still busy and beautiful at 42, Binoche continues to avoid the age trap that so many actresses fall into. If it’s true that good roles get rarer as actresses get older, maybe that’s because they’re all going to the same person. If you want to compete with Juliette Binoche you might have to do some breaking and entering of your own.

Un rêve français: Juliette Binoche

Lorsque Juliette Binoche décroche l’Oscar pour The English Patient d’Anthony Minghella en 1997, c’était la première fois qu’une actrice française remportait cette récompense en 37 ans. Aujourd’hui Minghella et Binoche collaborent à nouveau avec Breaking and Entering, dans lequel participe également Jude Law, la muse en version mâle de Minghella.

Law incarne un architecte londonien, dont le bureau fait l’objet de cambriolages par un jeune bosniaque (Rafi Gavron), ce qui va déboucher sur une relation tendue entre Law et la mère de Gavron (Binoche). Pour ce tournage, l’équipe s’est rendue à Sarajevo. “C’était bouleversant d’essayer de comprendre la raison de toute cette horreur,” confie Binoche. “10 années n’ont pas réussi à effacer le traumatisme. En tant qu’actrice, j’ai tout absorbé. C’est ma façon de fonctionner.”

La beauté mélancolique de Binoche a renforcé le côté poignant du film oscarisé The English Patient. Dans son discours face au public, elle a murmuré: “C’est comme dans un rêve, un rêve français.” Binoche s’était exclusivement focalisée sur des films français jusqu’à Chocolat en 2000, qui lui a valu une deuxième nomination aux Oscar.

Bien qu’elle ait endossé de nombreux rôles romantiques, elle soutient “qu’elle ne s’est jamais considérée comme une actrice cantonnée dans cette image. Je vais où le vent me pousse et je me laisse porter.”

Le projet à venir, Orsay, célèbre l’anniversaire du Musée d’Orsay à Paris. “Je joue une artiste qui vit dans son monde,” explique Binoche, toujours aussi active et ravissante à 42 ans.

Et s’il est vrai que les bons rôles deviennent plus rares au fur et à mesure que les actrices prennent de l’âge, c’est peut-être aussi parce qu’ils convergent tous vers une même personne.

A French dream: Juliette Binoche

Toen Juliette Binoche in 1997 een Oscar in de wacht sleepte voor haar rol in The English Patient van Anthony Minghella, was het 37 jaar geleden dat een Franse actrice had gewonnen. Nu maken Minghella en La Binoche hun terugkeer met Breaking and Entering, waarin we ook de mannelijke muze van Minghella aan het werk zien: Jude Law.

Law speelt een architect wiens kantoor de aandacht trekt van een Bosnische inbreker (Rafi Gavron), wat leidt tot een gespannen verhouding tussen Law en de moeder van Gavron (Binoche). De rol ging gepaard met een studietrip naar Sarajevo. “Trachten te begrijpen waarom al deze gruwel plaatsvond, was een overweldigende ervaring”, aldus Binoche. “Zelfs 10 jaar later is het trauma nog steeds daar. Als actrice nam ik alles in mij op. Ik moest.”

De melancholische schoonheid werd in The English Patient op een dramatische en Oscarwinnende manier uitgespeeld. In haar speech snikte ze “It’s like a dream, a French dream”. Daarna focuste Binoche zich op Franse films, tot Chocolat in 2000, de prent die haar een tweede Oscarnominatie opleverde.

Hoewel ze al vele romantische rollen speelde, blijft ze erbij: “Ik heb mezelf nooit als een romatische actrice beschouwd. Ik laat me gewoon meegaan met de wind en zie wel waar het eindigt”.

Het volgende project is Orsay, om de verjaardag te vieren van het Musée d’Orsay in Parijs. “Ik speel een kunstenares in haar eigen wereldje”, aldus Binoche, die op haar 42 nog altijd even mooi en bezig is.

Als het waar is dat goede rollen schaarser worden naarmate actrices ouder worden, dan is het misschien omdat Binoche er zoveel naar zich toe trekt.

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