Arts

Poetry, Playboy, and Paris

An interview with Juliette Binoche.

  • Posted: Thursday, September 17, 2009 8:45am
  • By Faith Salie

Juliette Binoche rejects labels. She doesn’t want to be called a dancer, even after spending two years touring the world in a dance production titled In-I and starring in Jubilations, a “dance-drama” event choreographed by Akram Khan. Binoche doesn’t want to be branded an artist, though she’s releasing Portraits In-Eyes, a book of paintings and poetry, and also exhibiting portraits at the French Embassy in New York. She doesn’t want to be pinned down as an actor, even though her latest film, Paris, debuts in America on Sept. 18. In Paris, Binoche plays a world-weary social worker named Elise, taking care of her brother. Her brother’s sickness suddenly gives new meaning to Elise’s life: She opens herself to love and even allows herself, fittingly, to dance.

Launch a slideshow of Juliette Binoche through the years.

Although the Academy Award winner eschews the labels of dancer, artist, and actor, we’re still going to call her busy. We also called her on the phone. We reached La Binoche, as she is lovingly known in her native France, on a break from rehearsal. She talked to us in her charming Gallicized English about learning to dance at 43, the blurry feminism of her Playboy spread, and the benefits of occasionally shutting up.

I want to note that it’s Labor Day, and while everyone else in America is taking a break, you’re probably taking a break from rehearsing to talk with us. How are we finding you at this very moment—are your feet elevated, on ice? Are you getting a massage while we’re on the phone?

Exactly. How did you know? I was talking to my sister who’s just arrived in New York. I wanted to make sure she was fine, and we had a sisters’ talk.

Do you call yourself a dancer now?

I try not to call myself [anything], because otherwise you get stuck into ideas. Getting into other fields, worlds—it gives me certain freedom, and at the same time it shows me my limits, my pain.

You started the process of dancing with Akram Khan in 2006, and you were not previously a dancer. Talk to me about your body—has it surprised you?

We have a tendency because of fear or of a lack of imagination to be out of tune with the truthful, magical side [of our bodies]. And I have to say that if I didn’t get through that experience, I wouldn’t have discovered my energy—what the Chinese people call qi, you know the tai chi, the qi gong. I would say it is a sign of what the body has, which is the energy that you can’t see but you can feel.

I realized that you can have the muscle, but if you don’t have the energy you can’t move. But if you don’t have the muscle but you have the energy, somehow it works better.

It’s as if you had the spiritual muscles before you created the physical muscles …

It’s beautifully said. Yes, I had the feeling of it, the vision, but my body was not ready to cooperate yet. Sometimes Akram was specific about the choreography, but mostly we improvised, and after that we chose movements we liked together.

Speaking of your body, Juliette, you did a spread for French Playboy when you were 43, and you said "modeling naked for Playboy was equally an act of universal love as well as a feminist act of militancy to change the world." Tell me how you saw your modeling as militant feminism.

[Laughing] It’s a little tricky. They phoned me up because Playboy wasn’t selling very well. And they had the idea of going back to the years of Playboy where there were lots of interviews of great people like [Jean-Luc] Godard. And so when they came to me and said they wanted to do this interview, and I said, “Do you want to do nude shots?” and they said no.

And so we did the interview, and I was happy with it, and I actually ended up talking a lot about nudity in the interview. And then after, the head of Playboy said there’s no way that there’s no nude photos, if we already have the interview.

Tags: Akram Khan, In-I, Juliette Binoche, Paris, Playboy, Summer Hours

Faith Salie is a former public radio host and a current (overly) eager television commentator who contributes to CBS Sunday Morning and Oprah.com.

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