Given the grave and generally unsmiling public profile of master actor Isabelle Huppert—she demands no noise at the movies, she can’t imagine wearing J. Crew (even when she does), she straight-up told the New York Times “I think the best way to please is not to please”—the video below, in which she joyfully flails to music like a baby who’s still getting to know what motor functions are all about, almost feels like classified information. Should I even know what bliss looks like on Huppert?
This visual revelation feels like a great cinematic mystery has been solved—that briefcase in Pulp Fiction contained a miniature version of Isabelle Huppert dancing. At the end of Lost in Translation, Bill Murray whispers to Scarlett Johansson, “Just hold on and make it to 2017. You’ll get to see Huppert flail rhythmically.”
The video was posted by Huppert’s fellow actor, Richard Berry, with whom Huppert recently filmed Eva. Note how Huppert looks merely content in her seat and entirely unmoved as the DJ spins Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” (fair), and that it is “Nuit de folie” by Début de Soirée, which went No. 1 in France in 1988, that propels Huppert from her seat. Her nostalgia is palpable, as will mine be as I look back on the day that I got to see Isabelle Huppert dance with abandon for the rest of my life.