D'un admirateur Americain

Folks, I hope you'll indulge me for a few minutes. I should have done this last week, but I seem to recall promising to tell you why a certain French actor has me under such a spell. Her body of work comes under the "guilty pleasure" file, like chocolate for some and pasta for others. Here, then, is the text of an open letter I wrote last week.

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D'un admirateur Américain: An Open Letter

May 22, 2009

Mme. Isabelle Huppert
Exact Address Unknown
Paris
FRANCE

Dear Mme. Huppert:

The odds are that you may never read this letter—the Good Lord knows you have more important things to do, even at this moment. I have ruminated long and hard over what to tell you that other, far smarter and far deeper people have told you untold numbers of times before, in nearly every language.

The plain fact is that I am a thirty-year old man living in a house trailer in semi-rural Florida, which means I am not the target audience, I’m sure, for your prodigious body of work. I could go on and on about La Pianiste, Nue Propertie, and any number of films and the effect each of them had on me; I won’t here. However, let it just be said that beginning with only the most cursory viewing of La Pianiste some years ago and really going into overdrive in the past year, my admiration for you and your work has only expanded, and shall continue, I have no doubt.

Although I am an admirer of world cinema in general, I do not regularly follow the Cannes Film Festival. 2009 marks the first year that I have followed Cannes the way I normally do baseball. If the President of the Jury were virtually anyone else, I would turn the page of the newspaper, click the back button on the browser, or turn back to the classical music station. Mme. Huppert, you are not just anyone else. And this is the larger point. It seems to me that you occupy a higher state of being, and it makes you and your work stronger and richer than any actor now working in the world. The Dalai Lama speaks of three types of faith; my faith in you, Mme. Huppert, is the second type, aspiring faith. I wish I could attain the state of being that you and those like you occupy; that of apparent creative and spiritual invincibility.

Someone here in Florida asked me very recently who my favorite actor was. I could not bring myself to answer the question, not because I knew it was you, but because if I did tell that person, I’d be greeted at best with a blank stare. My wish for you, Madame Huppert, is that you and your films receive greater notice in these States. I wish people could talk about you, Depardieu, Deneuve, Ardant and the rest of the brilliant roster of French actors and filmmakers with the same reverence and love that greets most American and certain English actors here in this country.

Knowing that your work and you exist, Madame Huppert, has enriched my life and its experience in the same way that having and loving my family and my friends enrich them. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being.

Very truly yours,

Matthew McIlvain
Tampa, Florida.