<\/p>\n
Kristen Stewart drew a packed house of festivalgoers, locals and fans at France\u2019s Deauville Film Festival for her masterclass titled My French Cinema and organized with Chanel. For the occasion, Stewart curated a list of her all-time favorite French movies and candidly discussed why they inspired her as an actor and filmmaker.<\/p>\n
Ranging across different eras and styles, the films she chose have in common a certain boldness, from Louis Malle\u2019s \u201cElevator to the Gallows\u201d (1958) to Alain Renais\u2019 \u201cHiroshima Mon Amour\u201d (1959), Catherine Breillat\u2019s \u201cA Real Young Girl\u201d (1976), Leos Carax\u2019s \u201cThe Lovers on the Bridge\u201d (1991), Krzysztof Kie\u015blowski\u2019s \u201cThe Double Life of Veronique\u201d (1991) and Michael Haneke\u2019s \u201cThe Piano Lesson\u201d (2001).<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n In her typical unfiltered, brainy and self-deprecating fashion, Stewart made the audience laugh as she admitted that she actually struggles to watch entire movies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds fucking absurd coming from me,\u201d Stewart said, \u201cconsidering it\u2019s what I want to do with the rest of my entire life. But I have to strap myself into a seat to stick with an entire movie. I drift in and out.\u201d<\/p>\n And although she\u2019s able to talk in granular detail about movies that have marked her, and has also served on the juries of Cannes (in 2018) and Berlin (2024), she \u201cwouldn\u2019t say that there\u2019s one filmmaker that (she) can tell you everything about this person top to bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n The first film she spoke about during the Deauville masterclass was \u201cA Real Young Girl,\u201d a film charting a 14-year-old girl\u2019s sexual awakening,\u00a0written and directed by Breillat, who is known as a subversive French filmmaker.<\/p>\n Stewart said she watched Breillat\u2019s movie shortly before she started filming her directorial debut \u201cThe Chronology of Water,\u201d an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch\u2019s memoir of the same name starring Imogen Poots as a woman who emerges from an abusive childhood and channels her trauma into competitive swimming, sexual exploration and addiction, before eventually discovering her voice as a writer.<\/p>\n The actor-director, who premiered her film at Cannes\u2019 Un Certain Regard and won the Deauville Film Festival\u2019s Revelation Prize on Saturday, said watching Breillat\u2019s \u201cA Real Young Girl\u201d \u201cwas specifically unlocking in a way that was very actionable because (she) went and made (her) movie like 30 seconds later.\u201d<\/p>\n She said she was struck by Breillat\u2019s movie, because she\u2019s \u201cjust not used to seeing coming-of-age stories that look at shame in a way that is also celebratory\u201d and she felt the movie was an \u201cinternal experience.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou watch it and you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s straightforward. She gets on a train and she\u2019s going home, and she\u2019s with her parents, but then she sticks a spoon inside of herself beneath the table. And you\u2019re like, maybe this isn\u2019t real,\u201d Stewart said, also drawing a parallel with \u201cThe Chronology of Water\u201d in which there is a scene where Poots \u201cis reaching deep inside of herself and pulling out a viscous and scented representation of what she is and savoring it and self-devouring.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re a kid and you\u2019re discovering yourself in all of the soppy, smelly, disgusting ways that you do, it\u2019s so easy to be embarrassed (\u2026) and I guess it\u2019s just very rare in a film to see somebody lap it up.\u201d<\/p>\n Stewart also talked about \u201cThe Piano Teacher,\u201d Haneke\u2019s cult film starring Isabelle Huppert as a piano teacher with repressed dark desires who embarks into a sadomasochistic relationship with her much younger pupil (Beno\u00eet Magimel). The role won Huppert a best actress award at Cannes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just one of my favorite movies of all time,\u201d Stewart said, before adding that it\u2019s also \u201cone of my favorite performances,\u201d referring to Huppert. She explained she was fascinated by the singular and ambivalent psyche of Huppert\u2019s onscreen character, Erika, because \u201cshe has no respect for anyone. She\u2019s so isolated by her genius and her intelligence and so just completely locked in this body of self-laceration.\u201d<\/p>\n But at the same time, Stewart argues that \u201cshe\u2019s not unhappy,\u201d and even if \u201cthat\u2019s not necessarily true, there\u2019s something about it that\u2019s like, if that\u2019s how this woman was constructed, she\u2019s actually doing a pretty good job. There\u2019s just something about the way that she protects what she wants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Piano Teacher\u201d was adapted by Haneke from a novel by Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s one of the most genius adaptations that I\u2019ve ever had the pleasure of both reading and watching,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cIt was very similar to \u2018One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest\u2019 because there\u2019s an internal experience going on in the literary form of this that is so articulate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a first-person perspective book, and she is consistently rattling off about what she is thinking in all of these environments,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n Kieslowski\u2019s \u201cThe Double Life of Veronique\u201d also compelled Stewart because \u201cIt\u2019s razor-sharp in terms of how it makes you feel.\u201d The film tells two parallel stories about two identical women; one living in Poland, the other in France. Irene Jacob, who plays both roles, won best actress at Cannes for the movie. Stewart joked that she \u201calmost fell off (her) chair when (Jacob\u2019s onscreen character) sings herself to death.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like you can enter an interior life and make a movie that is hyper specific about an internal feeling and not have to explain it,\u201d Stewart said. Kieslowski \u201cpaints it with the light and the first-person perspective. He\u2019s able to accomplish it without being weird in such penetrating and daring ways.\u201d<\/p>\n The film has also made her reflect on herself. \u201cSometimes you get sad that you\u2019re incomplete or something, and you\u2019ve killed off this old version of yourself. But they still live in you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Carax\u2019s \u201cThe Lovers on the Bridge,\u201d meanwhile, is another favorite film of Stewart\u2019s because she views it as \u201ca very quaint relationship movie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s closed off. He\u2019s afraid that if If she can see the whole world, then she won\u2019t want him. He\u2019s running after her. She\u2019s out of reach until she\u2019s so exhausted that he play acts that he\u2019s leading her in this waltz. But then ultimately, she spins off a top,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, you can\u2019t control the things you love. I\u2019m so sorry but if you did, you wouldn\u2019t want it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bridge is a big metaphor for not just deviation and destruction,\u201d she says. \u201cYou live in a world with a lot of other people and a lot of beauty that can distract you from the immense passion that is existing in this little microcosm between the two of you. But you can\u2019t live on a bridge forever.\u201d<\/p>\n While in Deauville, Stewart also attended a glitzy dinner hosted by Chanel and Canal+, the festival\u2019s two major sponsors, alongside her friend Charles Gillibert who produced \u201cThe Chronology of Water,\u201d and a raft of French and American stars. The bash followed the special screening of Richard Linklater\u2019s \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d which was supported by Chanel.<\/p>\n The Deauville Film Festival, headed by Aude Hesbert since 2024, wrapped Sunday and gave its Grand Prize to \u201cThe Plague,\u201d<\/a> Charlie Polinger\u2019s debut starring\u00a0Joel Edgerton<\/a>.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kristen Stewart drew a packed house of festivalgoers, locals and fans at France\u2019s Deauville Film Festival for her masterclass titled My French Cinema and organized with Chanel. For the occasion, Stewart curated a list of her all-time favorite French movies and candidly discussed why they inspired her as an actor and filmmaker. Ranging across different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2021351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[371542,371544,21993,371545,356170,356779,371543],"class_list":["post-2021350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-catherine-breillat","tag-deauville-film-festival","tag-films","tag-french-cinema","tag-isabelle-huppert","tag-kristen-stewart","tag-michael-haneke"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Kristen-Stewart-on-Her-Favorite-French-Films-From-Catherine-Breillat.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2021350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2021351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2021350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2021350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2021350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}