It started with an elbow dug deep into sinew. The masseur took stock of the elfin frame belonging to Juliette Binoche and simply said: ‘You should be a dancer.’

The observation struck not just a muscle, but a chord too. Although she’d never done a day’s dance training in her life, Binoche found the idea taking root.

The masseur with the intuitive elbow just happened to be married to the manager of leading dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, a man acclaimed for his combination of contemporary and Indian classical technique. So Binoche took herself off to a performance of Zero Degrees, Khan’s award-winning collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

From that moment, In-i, Binoche’s dance debut on stage, was born. ‘It’s important for me to face a different challenge. Do we just live or do we dare to live?’ says Binoche who, at 44, is very much a Renaissance woman. As well as In-i, which is set for a two-month run at the National Theatre, she is also the subject of a major retrospective of her movie career at the BFI Southbank, which stretches from her art-house roots in Mauvais Sang and Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf through to Hollywood hits The English Patient and Chocolat.

To top it all, the BFI Southbank is staging an exhibition of her paintings at the same time. A perfectionist, she is fretting over how the paintings, mostly lively, impressionistic portraits of directors she has worked with, have been hung. ‘Do you think people will see them here?’ she asks, mostly to herself, before explaining her restless creativity stretches back to her childhood.

‘It was an artist friend of my mother’s who first showed me you can be anything you want to be. There don’t have to be limits. She told me: “If you want to be an artist, then be an artist. Be whatever you want.” If we do the same thing again and again, then we simply rewrite ourselves.’ There was no guarantee In-i would get off the ground. Once introduced to Khan, the pair squirreled themselves away in a studio to see if they were creatively compatible.

So, did Khan have any expectations of this surprising encounter with Juliette Binoche, movie star? ‘She broke my expectations when she first laughed – it was such a human laugh,’ he says. ‘The laughter went on into the studio; it made it so full of life.’ The warmth between the pair is palpable. In response, Binoche pays tribute to Khan for ‘making me look like a dancer. It feels like we feed off each other’s sensibilities’.

One benefit of possessing a bankable name is once they’d decided they wanted to create a show together, the offers came flooding in. After the London run, a world tour is on the cards. ‘Only the Japanese are resisting,’ laughs Binoche. ‘They seem to want to know what it’s about.’

On that point, both Binoche and Khan are a touch elliptical. Early ideas about the symbolism of angels and Khan playing the guitar have fallen by the wayside (’I wish I’d never said that,’ says Khan, ‘but I will be singing’), a result of the improvisational process that has evolved in the studio as Binoche’s dancing and Khan’s acting – the cross-creative process is a two-way street – have grown stronger together.

What they will say is that it’s a show about couples and love, and the contribution of Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor, the third corner of this stellar creative triangle, plays a key part in proceedings. ‘There are so many different layers in the creation of it,’ says Khan. ‘The meaning changed and emerged as we improvised.’ Khan is well versed in working with artists, having enlisted Antony Gormley for Zero Degrees. ‘Working with visual artists is a whole other thing. They create in their own worlds and present you with the results.’

There is also text, written by Binoche. ‘At the start, words would come first because I didn’t know how it was possible for my body to respond. Now I know what you can’t say by the body, then you speak it. The reverse is true also. It’s about finding the best way to express what you want to say.’

She’s clearly revelling in the physical discipline of dance, complaining unconvincingly about the daily toil of taking class and the effort involved in keeping limber. So does she regret she didn’t turn to dance earlier in life? She looks uncharacteristically stern. ‘No, no. It’s not about regrets. It’s about pursuing the possibilities we can follow. The most important thing is daring to fail by pushing yourself.’ So what does In-i mean? Binoche flickers through an ineffably enigmatic Gallic smile. ‘What does In-i mean? What’s inside yourself. It’s as simple and as complex as that.’

source: metro.co.uk

Juliette Binoche refuses to discuss her private life because, she says, she already reveals so much in her various roles: from acting in her latest film Paris, to painting, writing poetry, starring in a dance collaboration, or disrobing for Playboy, says Hephzibar Anderson

By Hephzibar Anderson
Sunday August 03 2008

JULIETTE Binoche’s 25-year-long career has cast her variously as gamine seductress and dispossessed single mum. She has appeared as a beautician, an actress obsessed with Mary Magdalene and avant-garde novelist George Sand. She weathered her looks to play the down-and-out, artistic heroine of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, she learnt to make chocolate for the film adaptation of Joanne Harris’s sticky-sweet bestseller and she teased the camera with smiles and smouldering looks to advertise Lancome scent. Read more… »

Everybody knows Juliette Binoche the actor. Some may even know Juliette Binoche the painter, or the poet. But now, after about two years learning a new art form, we are to get Juliette Binoche the dancer.

“It’s not easy you know. You try releasing the hips,” she encouraged journalists yesterday. The actor was in London to talk about what promises to be a Binoche autumn on the South Bank with the premiere of her collaborative work In-I at the National Theatre, a retrospective of her films - from The English Patient to Chocolat to Hidden - at the BFI, and an accompanying exhibition of her paintings and poems. Read more… »

For the first time in 21 years, a French film took the top prize at Cannes, signaling that French cinema, which once led the world in quality films, is back on top. You can see some of the finest in contemporary French cinema at the fifth annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, a festival that just opened at the Lev Dizengoff and Dizengoff cinemas in Tel Aviv, and which will run through Saturday. Adding to the excitement, a number of France’s top directors and actors will be visiting Israel to introduce their new works.

The opening attraction this year is Cedric Klapisch’s Paris, which stars two of France’s biggest (and most stunning) stars, Roman Duris and Juliette Binoche. Duris plays a dancer at the Moulin Rouge who suddenly discovers he has a serious heart condition and may die if he doesn’t receive a transplant. Binoche is his sister, with whom he has never been close, who comes to Paris to care for him. The movie, which takes place during a single day, shows how the city itself helps bring the ailing man closer to life when he becomes aware, for the first time, of its vitality and diversity. Several critics noted in their reviews that the film made them want to jump on the next plane to Paris. Read more… »

Juliette Binoche, introducing “Flight of the Red Balloon” to audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, described the project as a “life-changing experience.”

A tad dramatic maybe, but hey, she’s an actress.

The next day, as she prepared to introduce another of her movies at the festival - Amos Gitai’s “Disengagement” - Binoche elaborated.

“I had never experienced such complete trust from a director,” she said, referring to Hou Hsiao Hsien, the Taiwanese filmmaker who took the 1956 children’s cinema classic “The Red Balloon” and, well, flew with it in his improvisational, slice-of-Parisian-life homage.

“There was a script, but it had no dialogue - none,” Binoche recalled with a hearty laugh during an interview in Toronto. “There were discussions about the story, but that was it. On the set, Hou just trusted us … and now and then he would supply some facts that you needed to know to follow the story. And I was overwhelmed by that. I thought it was so generous.” Read more… »