ISABELLE H

While drinking tea at a café table, the French actress Isabelle Huppert reads from Georges Bataille’s Le langage des fleurs (1929). As if adding a drop of milk, soft lounge music accompanies her velvety voice. In the piece she is reading, flowers are metaphors for love, emotions between men and women, passion and sexuality. Labarthe’s voice-over occasionally interrupts Huppert to read from the book himself, while the picture is criss-crossed with extracts from the book and nostalgic-looking collages of American film stars from the heyday of Hollywood.