The hair is back red, the small figure, the aggressive style in the all black look with the big dark glasses to protect it, for
La Syndacaliste
instead Isabelle Huppert has transformed, long blond hair and eyeglasses, almost unrecognizable.
"With the character and the real
Maureen Kearney
She was found in her home tied to a chair, with the letter A engraved on her stomach and the handle of a knife in her vagina.
She was raped, she reported to the police but by her victim she became a suspect, sentenced to two years and a 5,000 euro fine.
She won in 2018 on appeal.
A sensational story that ended up in oblivion.
"Her courage, her strength, her strong reaction and of great dignity compared to what they had done to her and what was happening seemed almost cheeky for a woman. a character about which an atmosphere of suspicion hovers from the beginning, portraying a tough, angular woman who wore armor with clothes, glasses, accessories and lipstick ".
The director (who had already directed Huppert in 2020 in the beautiful detective story La Daronne, released with the title The Godmother) is more explicit: "Maureen acted with her head held high in a world of powerful men, a kind of showdown with them, the struggle of this woman interested me a lot, in addition to the political theme of nuclear power and
energy independence which today are much more topical than they were then.
For them she represented a threat, she is a woman of the people, attacking her was easy. "She does not react to the rape," I don't know how she reacts, it depends on the circumstances, she is ashamed of not being believed, they consider her a manipulator but she is deeply wounded also from the immense cascading pressures that surround her and that accompany her during the trial ", says Huppert, 69 and a film just shot in Italy, Michele Placido's Caravaggio.
"I have no educational missions, cinema - he concludes - is a journey into the imagination, it is not reality, otherwise we would have made a documentary".
The reconstruction, however, is timely and the film was shot in the real court and as extras they agreed to be the workers in orange vests for which she had fought.