Anne Consigny

In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Anne Consigny’s Claude has the professional poise of someone making an effort to keep her feelings in check. It is the sort of restrained playing we value in her: she gives a supporting part feeling without making a display of it. We were moved by Julian Schnabel’s film because Mathieu Amalric’s Bauby remains complicated rather than becoming easier to like for our benefit. Schnabel sometimes gets too absorbed in making beautiful images, but the performances give us people to attend to. Consigny holds her place among them.

Not Here to Be Loved (2005), with Consigny in the lead as Françoise, marked the turn after a sparse period of screen work. Steady supporting roles followed from the mid-2000s, often as wives or professional women under strain. In Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale (2008), her Elizabeth gives that restraint a more resentful edge. Desplechin is one of her recurring directors, and family ensembles suit an actor who can suggest strong feelings without advertising them.

In Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016), she plays Anna alongside Isabelle Huppert, whose performance rightly takes most of our attention. We recommend the film for its disturbing mixture of thriller and humour, with a firm warning about brutal sexual violence. The elaborate plotting can try too hard, and our admiration for the film should not be mistaken for a claim that this is primarily Consigny’s evening. It is another supporting role in a career full of them; we would not choose it simply to see her.

Our reservation concerns how often the same sorts of parts return. Casting her repeatedly as a wife or a professional woman under strain risks making restraint look like the only thing she can offer. Her recurring work with Desplechin and Amalric gives us reason to pay attention to the ensemble, though we would welcome more chances to see her at its centre. Start with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, then try Not Here to Be Loved for the leading role.