Renowned actress Isabelle Adjani will be the subject of a tribute at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, from July 2-17, sponsored by Eden Cinema. Anyone with a serious interest in French cinema or acting should see Adjani’s movies.
The daughter of an Algerian father and a German mother, Adjani grew up in France and joined the Comedie-Francaise theater company at the age of 17. She was nominated for an Oscar for her first major role, in Francois Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H., which will be part of the tribute.
Time has been extremely kind to this movie, which was released in 1975, and Adjani is brilliant and distinctive in this story about one of Victor Hugo’s daughters, who became obsessed with a British officer and followed him around the world, gradually going insane. The movie and her performance have lost none of their intensity, and once it was released, she became an international star.
The tribute also includes the second film for which Adjani was nominated for an Oscar, Bruno Nuytten’s Camille Claudel (1990), in which she played the title character, a real-life sculptor who was an assistant for Auguste Rodin (Gerard Depardieu).
Beauty and talent
In Patrice Chereau’s Queen Margot (1994), she played a young monarch caught up in the conflict between Catholics and Protestants and forced into an arranged marriage.
Adjani, known for her beauty as well as her talent, dated such stars as Warren Beatty, who cast her in his notorious Middle Eastern caper, Ishtar (which is not part of the tribute, although it isn’t nearly as bad as people say), and Daniel Day-Lewis, with whom she has a child.
She played mysterious beauties in a number of films, among them Luc Besson’s 1985 Subway and Jean Becker’s 1983 movie, One Deadly Summer.
The tribute also includes some of her more recent movies, among them Yamina Benguigui’s Sisters, about an Algerian family in France and the secrets that tear them apart when their father is dying.
For more information and to order tickets, go to cinema.co.il.