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Some people say,

An excellent actor,

Enough to become the face of the country.

For France,

Juliette Binoche

That's the face.

When this face appeared before my eyes,

The iconic heart-shaped lips widen into a smile.

The smile seemed to emanate from deep within her heart.

For this man who has appeared in more than a hundred films,

For an actress who has won awards at all major film festivals,

Box office or awards are not her concern.

For her,

Film, like all other performing arts,

It points to the discovery of self.

And the search for the love of life.

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After winning the Best Director Award at the Cannes International Film Festival for Le Pot-au-feu de Dodin Bouffant, Chen Yingxiong shared a behind-the-scenes video of the film. At the end of the film, there is a scene where Juliette Binoche's character Eugénie asks the gourmet Dodin: to him, with whom she has worked side by side for more than 20 years, is she a chef or a wife?

Benoit Magimel’s character, Dodain, is supposed to say, “You are my cook,” but he adds, “And my wife.”

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"It completely changed the meaning of the scene," Chen Yingxiong recalled. "I said, Benoit, are you crazy? Why did you change the line?" Benoit walked over to Chen Yingxiong, smiled and whispered an apology: "I'm sorry, I was mesmerized by her eyes."

For many fans, the first reaction to learning that Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel were going to co-star in "Fondue" was shock. The two fell in love more than 20 years ago and gave birth to a daughter named "Hana" - which is also the name of the character played by Juliette Binoche in the movie "The English Patient". Now, daughter Hanna is 25 years old and has inherited her parents' mantle and entered the film industry. Before confirming to star in "Fondue", Binoche and Magimel had not worked together for more than 20 years and had almost no contact with each other.

"I didn't know what would happen, so I imagined many situations. Having a child is not a small matter, and being an actor is not a small matter. All the past and fears were transformed into an emotion, that is, I am standing in front of a man who used to live with me, but now there is a distance between us. But for this role, I used this emotion to interpret the emotional relationship between Eugenie and Dodain that could not be connected by words."

At 10 a.m. Paris time, wearing black-framed glasses, Juliette Binoche appeared on the other side of the screen to tell us the story behind the movie. The eyes behind the glasses are undoubtedly familiar - in her nearly four-decade career, Binoche has starred in more than 100 films, and her face has become a symbol of French cinema in several eras. Even through the transmission of electronic signals, the determination in these eyes is still eye-catching. As Kristen Stewart, who worked with her in "Clouds of Sils Maria", said, there is something about Juliette Binoche - "When she looks you in the eye, her eyes alone can tell you. She is so honest."

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The performance in "French Fondue" that was "out of context" due to Juliette Binoche's charming eyes was eventually ruthlessly rejected by director Chen Yingxiong. In this film about the life story of a female chef, the dialectical relationship between self and love is the core from beginning to end. Affirming Eugenie's identity as a chef is also affirming a woman's shining self. This is Chen Yingxiong's original intention to bring this novel to the screen, and it is also the effort that Juliette Binoche has been making in her 40 years of acting career.

She mentioned more than once in interviews that when she first entered the industry, she found that most awards were given to men, and even most of the lines in the film took place between male characters. Female actors had to face a lot of emotional scenes, nude scenes or silence. As a young actress, she was a little angry at first. "I wondered, when will the director let me have something to say?"

Now, forty years have passed, and Juliette Binoche has seen that the once single situation is changing: more and more female directors have emerged; even female characters in classic stories are no longer passive characters that are completely dependent on men - such as "The Return" by Italian director Umberto Pasolini, which she has just finished shooting. The story is adapted from the ancient Greek epic "Odyssey", and Binoche plays Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. Compared with the image of the faithful Virgin Mary in the traditional interpretation, Binoche is more willing to give this role another kind of dignity: she is a woman and also a queen. During the twenty years when Odysseus was away, Penelope had to face the numerous suitors alone, which made her have complicated feelings towards Odysseus. "She felt sad and frustrated because of her loneliness, and she also saw her son's fragility. The director said that he wanted a woman to see the war, travel and destructiveness of men from a female perspective. I think this is a very modern movie."

Just as important as the progress of the industry, Juliette Binoche has learned how to express herself with silence in her 40 years as an actress. "You look at Charlie Chaplin and Lillian Gish, and you can read everything on their faces. Everything is inside, so you don't need to hear the words."

Juliette Binoche grew up in Paris in the 1960s. Her father was a theater director and sculptor, and her mother was a literature teacher. In Binoche's words, both her parents were actors, but they also worked other jobs to survive. In her memory, the spark of creation came from a play she and her mother watched in Paris together - Peter Brook's Ubu Roi. The joy was so intense that she couldn't wait to share it with others. From that moment on, the dream of acting took root in Binoche's heart.

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When Binoche was 4 years old, her parents separated, which meant that Binoche spent most of her time in boarding school and lived with her grandmother during the holidays. Looking back after growing up, Binoche felt that her childhood life of wandering around and not knowing where she belonged helped her acting career a lot. "It opened my heart to some extent and allowed me to understand many different feelings and people's complex situations. Acting requires a lot from actors, and injecting your own real experiences into the script and story is a way of transformation and understanding. You have to go deep into it, but you still have to return to yourself in the end."

Although Binoche felt that acting was a very important subject in her life since she was very young, for a long time she was undecided about what career she would pursue when she grew up. When she was a teenager, because of her love for drama, she also considered becoming a stage designer. When she was 13 years old, she went to see an exhibition of a friend of her mother. Binoche asked the painter if she could make a choice for herself. Unexpectedly, the painter asked her back: "Why do you want to choose?" After that, the painter signed a poster for her and advised her to "continue everything." Binoche put this poster in her bedroom to remind herself to follow the voice of her heart. "Why should I choose? Just do everything I want to do."

To some extent, her acting career has always followed this principle. She began performing in amateur theaters when she was a teenager. Although she was admitted to the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Paris (CNSAD), she soon left the school due to other performance invitations. Before that, at the age of 18, she met acting teacher Vera Gregh. In this teacher's class, Binoche no longer just "played" a role, but learned to "become" a role.

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In 1985, the fledgling Binoche won the Prix Romy Schneider, a French film award given to young actresses, for her film Rendez-vous. Binoche's memory of the award is already vague. But she clearly remembers that on the day of the award ceremony, a hairstylist came to her home and accidentally burned her bangs. Because of this accident, Binoche was late. This made the film industry master Alain Delon very angry. "He said, how can you be late?" Binoche laughed, recalling the embarrassing scene when she was young.

Starting with the Romy Schneider Award, in her 40-year acting career, Juliette Binoche has won all the important acting awards from France to the world. In 1993, she won the Venice International Film Festival and the French Film Cesar Award for her performance in Trois couleurs: Bleu; in 1997, she won the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as nurse Anna in The English Patient; in 2010, she won the Palme d'Or for Best Actress at the Cannes International Film Festival for her collaboration with Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami in Copie conforme.

These so-called awards and honors are obviously never a topic of concern for Juliette Binoche. What she cares about is always the simple identity of "actress" and the curiosity, imagination and creativity under this identity. "I like acting and I like to imagine different kinds of life. This kind of immersion in acting is very nourishing to me."

In 2008, 44-year-old Binoche took to the stage and collaborated with the Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan on the dance drama In-I. This collaboration was an adventure. While filming in London, Binoche went to the studio of acupressure masseur Su-Man Hsu for a massage. The masseur's husband was Akram Khan's producer Farooq Chaudhry. During the massage, she asked Binoche if she wanted to try dancing.

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After watching Aku Khan's dance live, the two hit it off and immediately decided to collaborate. Aku Khan later said that this was an "intuitive choice." In a jointly written work explanation, they said: "The courage to innovate is the reason why we promised each other."

It took Binoche two years from agreeing to collaborate to actually going on stage. It is not easy to "train your body into a convincing tool for self-expression" at the age of over 40. Compared with film art, the scalability and continuity of stage performances are equally challenging. However, now, looking back on the difficulties in the past and talking about why he chose to stand on the stage in the first place, Binoche is more willing to ask: Why not?

"I have to reinvent myself, which puts me in a positive state and exposes me to many new things. I like to expand my possibilities, and life has given me these. If you really understand the possibilities that life has given you, you will want to say 'yes'. Because our life is about 'yes', not 'no'."

Binoche admitted that it is natural to have fears when going to new fields and standing on new stages. But in her opinion, as an actor, overcoming fear is an eternal lesson. "I will be afraid of a difficult scene, a difficult monologue, and even more afraid because my daily efforts cannot calm my anxiety. Everyone has fears, and you have to face them in order to mature and evolve. Fear is a driving force, and we love fear because it comes from the deep desire for change in human hearts."

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In 2009, Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan brought "Inside My Heart" to China. Nine years later, Binoche took "Vaille qui vivre (BARBARA)" to the Chinese stage again. In this musical drama, she sang 16 of Barbara's songs on stage for the first time.

The idea of ​​producing such a stage work came from Binoche's good friend, pianist Alexandre Tharaud. Why not sing it yourself? Faced with this question, Binoche once again said "yes". She also learned to sing from scratch and was looking for another way to express herself on stage. The difference is that this time the motivation to challenge herself may also be the "provocation" of her mother.

"My mother often tells me: You are an actor. You don't need to sing or dance, you are an actor. But every time she says this to me, it makes me want to explore new areas. I always look forward to my mother's praise, which makes me feel safe, but she is always reluctant to praise. Of course, I have surpassed this need now."

The love-hate relationship between mother and daughter is probably just a joke. On Binoche's artistic path, her mother was the first guide and the first audience. It was her mother who found her acting teacher, Vera Craig. In 2006, Binoche held an exhibition in her mother's hometown of Czestochowa, Poland, and it was her mother who opened the exhibition.

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Binoche has loved painting since she was a girl. In the movie "Les amants du Pont-Neuf", Binoche plays a painter with eye problems. The film took two and a half years to shoot and was nicknamed "the most expensive French film in history" - not because of the budget, but because of the twists and turns in the filming process. In an underwater scene shot in a swimming pool, Binoche carried 12 kilograms of weight on her body, and two divers assisted the actors to breathe. In one shot, Binoche sent out a distress signal, but the divers did not bring oxygen to save her. At that moment, Binoche felt that she had reached the critical point of her life, and she had only one thought in her mind - to survive. After struggling hard, Binoche finally floated to the surface, and an idea became clearer and clearer in her mind: "I will always say 'yes' to life, and art will be second. I have always been quite sacrificial, but this experience has made me understand that people must first respect and treat themselves well."

This film brought many chain reactions outside the screen. After the filming of the film, Binoche ended her relationship with director Leos Carax. During the filming of the film, actor Denis Lavant injured his hand and the filming had to be postponed for 9 months. During this long and boring wait, Binoche picked up the paintbrush again and started another life possibility on the drawing paper.

Today, as an actress known to the world for her movies, Juliette Binoche has tried almost all means of artistic expression, including art exhibitions, poetry collections, dance and music performances. Looking back, she increasingly feels that all expressions lead to the same goal. "Dancing is painting in the air, and painting is dancing on paper. The same is true for poetry, and the verses flow naturally from the tip of the pen." She once joked that in the 20th century, movies were the most popular of these artistic expressions, so she became a movie star, and perhaps everything will change in the future. But no matter which form of expression she chooses, Binoche believes that the most important thing about art is always the exposure of the inner self and the connection with the unknown self that must be faced in expression. As an actor, you always have to face the situation of being watched and displayed. Therefore, many actors with cruel childhoods are almost shaping a new life. "This is always a spiritual adventure."

Of course, Juliette Binoche likes adventures. She often mentions a sentence: "Acting is another choice outside of life, a spiritual adventure close to oneself." For decades, the media has been talking about similar questions: Did you reject "Jurassic Park" because of "Blue of the Blue, White and Red Trilogy"? Are you more willing to act in art films than in Hollywood commercial blockbusters? But again, such "choose one or the other" has never been a question that Binoche would think about. For her, she never wants to imagine what kind of box office results the movie will get. She only cares whether the role and the work can bring her fresh experience and feelings.

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Sometimes, the freshness is brought by the characters: the spoiled adult daughter in "Summer Time" (L'heure d'été), the mysterious and dissatisfied single female antique dealer in "Legal Copy", the genius mad woman and mentally ill sculptor living in the shadow of Rodin in "Camille Claudel, 1915", the mad scientist in "High Life", the divorced woman with a fictitious identity in "Who Do You Think I Am" (Celle que vous croyez)...

Loss of love, loss of identity, loss of parents, loss of attraction, loss of self... These characters have different identities, personalities and motivations, but the only thing they have in common is that they all have rich inner layers. Some film critics analyzed that in the past decade, Binoche seemed to be interested in exploring all the new layers that a person has as he or she ages. But Binoche said that when she encounters a script, her feelings about the story and the characters are instinctive. "The promise of 'yes' is a feeling that emanates from the body. I believe in the feeling of the body and don't like to think too much with my head."

Sometimes, new feelings are brought by the director. Binoche said that when choosing to act, the first thing to look at is the story, and the second is the director. She has worked with directors from different countries, including some well-known names.

In 1985, she worked with Jean-Luc Godard, the flag bearer of the New Wave of Films, as a newcomer. On the set, Godard created difficulties for the actors and for himself, which made Binoche, who was still a newcomer, walk on thin ice and had to be well prepared every time she arrived at the scene.

Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda's filming is completely different. The camera moves with the actors, and the director lets everything happen naturally, a process that is almost like capturing rather than performing. Binoche said that sometimes, her performance is completely different from what the director expected, but the director just lets everything happen naturally, "so much so that I forget I'm shooting a movie."

"The Japanese will never say 'no' because they think it's impolite to say 'no'. But the French will always say 'no' first." Binoche said that she likes to work with different directors. This is not only an opportunity to understand different cultures, but also a process of understanding the differences between people. More importantly, in this process, she will also understand herself better. "So I also look forward to having the opportunity to work with Chinese directors Jia Zhangke and Jiang Wen one day."

Producer/MIX WEI

Photo by Javie Biosca

Co-ordinator/JOYCE WANG

Model/PUNKCHERRY

Text Coordinator/ChicoChan

Written by Jellyfish

Translation/Emily SUN

Makeup/CÉLINE PLANCHENAULT

Hairstyle/PERRINE ROUGEMENT

Nail Art/MAGALI SANZEY

Producer/NHR STUDIO

Photo Retouching/TIFF STUDIO

Photo assistant/ALVARO TOME, JULES LE MASSON, PAUL NAOPHELL

Costume Assistant/Cheng Nanqi

Tailor/Rookie

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