Isabelle Huppert Plays a Failed Extra in 'All About Corinne'

Isabelle Huppert, one of the few French actresses with definite-article status at home — routinely called La Huppert, alongside La Binoche and La Deneuve — plays a nameless movie extra whom nobody remembers in All About Corinne, Marc Fitoussi's new industry satire.

That casting inversion is the film's chief gag, and according to Variety's review, it has a lot of mileage. Sandrine Kiberlain co-stars not as a character but as "Sandrine Kiberlain" herself, an imperious leading lady who serves as Huppert's foil. The film opened its festival run as Locarno's closing night selection and continued through gala slots in Toronto and Busan. Variety predicts it will have little trouble securing global arthouse distribution.

What's the story?

Huppert plays Corinne Maclou, an actress in her sixties who has spent decades at the least glamorous end of the business — fringe theater and film extra work, fighting younger bit players for the rare gift of a single line. "You might want to ask yourself why you're still in the same place at your age," a colleague tells her, with casual cruelty.

The joke, of course, is that Corinne isn't lacking ability. Huppert dims her light but doesn't stretch to play a bad actor. She's simply never had the break, and the ironic star casting underlines the pathos: she knows, and we know, that she's a Huppert-level talent.

How does the plot work?

Corinne's standard tactic for currying favor with bigger-name actresses is to remark on their physical resemblance — they could play sisters, she cheerfully suggests. It gets her nowhere with the tall, beachy-haired Kiberlain. But Corinne's persistence lands during a sudden insecurity phase for the leading lady, whose agent pithily tells her that "even Cotillard is less detached from reality." Kiberlain pityingly accepts Corinne's CV and a recording of an obscure Chilean play Corinne believes to be her finest hour.

Nothing comes of it — until months later, when Corinne learns Kiberlain is staging that very play in Paris. A bitter confrontation outside the theater forges a highly conditional friendship. Each actress uses the other: Corinne sees her long-awaited connection to the top; Kiberlain believes Corinne helps her "keep it real."

Who else appears?

The cameo roster includes Emmanuelle Bercot, tetchily directing a big-budget period drama, and Diane Kruger — hilariously glamazonian, in Variety's word — competing with Kiberlain for maximum miscasting in a new Dardenne Brothers film about a tiler in Liège.

Fitoussi, a specialist in female-driven French comedies including the Huppert vehicle Copacabana and the Laure Calamy hit Two Tickets to Greece, writes fizzily and lightly bitchily. But Variety credits the stars, playing freely with their own screen personae, for making the film genuinely funny. The review notes the swap built into the concept: there's as much comedy in Huppert playing a spiraling rube as in Kiberlain, known for neurotic comic work, revealing the brittle hauteur of her "real" self.

What does this change for audiences?

Not much, and that's the point. The film cuts precisely without cutting deep — Variety calls it more sweet than scathing, too fond of its stars to draw blood. Viewers au fait with Call Your Agent! will feel right at home. For Huppert completists and arthouse buyers, it's an easy sell; for the French industry it skewers, a light slap delivered with a wink.