Third place:
Sonia Braga - Aquarius [110 points / 17 votes]
Second place:
Annette Bening - 20th Century Women [124 points / 19 votes]
And the Muriel goes to...
Isabelle Huppert - Elle [247 points / 36 votes]
[By the way, that's one point shy of double the total of the #2 finisher. Talk about your landslide victory.]
"At a recent Master Class I attended at the Actors Studio, run by director/teacher Jack Garfein, Garfein said, 'In life we are hidden from each other. And rightly so.' On a crowded sidewalk you do not know what is in the hearts of the people around you. One of the gifts of great acting is that it reveals the inner experience of others.
"Isabelle Huppert’s performance in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle is sui generis. Only she could have pulled it off. It is a performance made up of laser-specific moments, equal parts hilarious and shattering. The most 'Huppert' quality of all, though, the quality that elevates the performance above the expected, and makes it so much hers, and hers alone, is that the performance conceals just as much as it reveals. It may even conceal MORE than it reveals. She remains somewhat hidden from us, and perhaps, as Garfein suggested, 'rightly so.' Throughout Huppert’s lengthy career, she has shown total fearlessness in playing characters where ultimate explanations are withheld.
"This is a style of acting that has practically vanished from the earth. So many actors love character explanations (and will pontificate in interviews about it). How much we lose, though, when we turn our backs on mystery - the mystery embodied by actresses like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Liv Ullmann, Anna Magnani, Gena Rowlands - women with secrets they will never tell. It takes fearlessness to withhold that much at the same time tso much is expressed. Huppert has always worked like this, and in Elle, she pushes it to the limit. Who IS this woman? She is a severe, self-sufficient tough cookie, revealed mostly in what she does: her behavior as dinner party hostess, the way she stares at the small hatchet in a contemplative deadpan, her brief moment of air guitar on the dance floor.
"This is a sexually alert woman, formed by infamy and public condemnation. Even SHE doesn’t seem to know why she does what she does. If Huppert’s performance makes you uncomfortable, then it is required of you to look deeper, question your reaction. Could a trauma survivor behave in this way? Of COURSE they can, and they do. Women are judged harshly (by men, and even harsher by other women) no matter what they do. No wonder Huppert’s character clutches her secrets tight. No wonder she sets the terms of her social contract with others. She stalks towards disaster and lingers once it surrounds her. Ah, this feels familiar to her. She knows THIS, at least. It is her birthright, that catastrophic edge." ~ Sheila O'Malley
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