Juliette Binoche: The mere memory of Hana

I began collecting photographs — portraits — of famous people in 1990. Before my obsession with authors’ photos, there was my fanboy phase with movie stars. I clipped pages from Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, and LIFE. It was not just the pretty face or the perfect body that I favored, although that helped, of course. It was something in the gaze of the subject, whether looking at the camera or turning sideways to pay attention (or pretend to pay attention) to something beyond the frame. I had one “clear book,” the inexpensive kind with transparent page-pockets, in which I filed some of my favorite images.

I had multiple takes of Tina Turner in a tight miniskirt gyrating in the street. I had a beaming Richard Gere sitting in a chair in the middle of a vast field, looking regal, calm, and (yeah) sexy. I had Ellen DeGeneres with a beatific smile, triumphant after coming out via that “Yep, I’m Gay” cover in Time. I had Meryl Streep in somber period costume as The French Lieutenant’s Woman perched on a gigantic tree. I had Woody Allen, Jessica Tandy, Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Shue, Johnny Depp, Diane Keaton, Ralph Fiennes, Drew Barrymore, River Phoenix, Whoopi Goldberg, Matthew Fox, even posters of Bette Midler movies and When Harry Met Sally. And I had Juliette Binoche.

This afternoon I searched all over the house for that photo album, but I couldn’t find it. That happens. You need something desperately now and then it disappears forever. Oh well, I’m sure it’s somewhere. For now, this is what I remember. Juliette Binoche in a house dress, sitting on a bench, taking a break from shooting, smiling tentatively. She is "made up" as the nurse Hana, her Oscar-winning role in The English Patient (written and directed by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje). It was obviously not a scene from the movie. It was the actress resting, obliging to have her picture taken. Perhaps there was a cigarette visibly lit, sticking out from her fingers, though I would prefer a smoke-free version of that moment. She looked tired, a bit frumpy, and her hair was a mess — that was Hana, of course. But somehow she managed to look fresh and alluring. That was — that is — Juliette Binoche.

Years ago I wondered how she could do that. How in a photograph she could look both the character she was playing and the real person who was taking a break from her work. Of course, that’s what great actors do. She was aware of a camera in her midst. She might have even been instructed to achieve that look. Or it could just be me. I was associating this woman in the picture with what I hoped or feared she might actually be. I was projecting my fantasies and hang-ups into the image. From what I had recalled from the novel or from my own life’s narratives, I could read anything or anyone into the picture.

Now even the mere memory of that photograph can help me recreate Hana. She has witnessed the horrors of war and refuses to see more violence and suffering. She chooses to stay amid the ruins of a villa. She commits herself to taking care of the bedridden patient with the burned skin and blurred identity. She washes his wounds. She reads books to him. She listens to his stories. She takes refuge in the little she can ever know about him. But even the most tenacious attachments, the ways one seeks solace in the bodies and souls of others, have limits. So, in a scene I cannot forget, Hana, with help from ampoules of morphine, finally lets go of her patient. She cannot keep reinventing this man and his past for herself. She can no longer stay “in love with ghosts.”

I tried Google Images, but even the Internet seems to have lost that photograph. Instead, there are all these stills from The English Patient and the actress' other films as well as other photos that are too Hollywood for me. For this blog, I chose to post an image that I thought was the least “actressy” — not too much cleavage, not too much hair drama, not too much Lancôme. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if this one turned out to be yet another glamour promo for the cosmetics giant. Unfortunately, there’s no photo credit on the website. Could this be another Richard Avedon stunner? Or a distilled-to-the-essence beauty by Brigitte Lacombe? [Author's note, Dec. 8, 2014: The photo is by Brigitte Lacombe. Thank you, Ms. Lacombe.] My search continues. I grope for scraps of certainty, for origins of what I see or recall, for comfort in stray thoughts.

A famous line from The English Patient echoes Stendhal: “A novel is a mirror walking down a road.” I follow that thought for a while, then I go back to wondering where or how my favorite photograph of Juliette Binoche, of Hana, could have wandered off. My mind drifts in images, reflections, reconstructions. Time diffuses in the morphine of memory.

[Photo: Thank you, cinemaandpopcorn.blogspot.com.]