Isabelle Huppert, or the art of becoming a major cinema icon with zero expression on your face. She certainly was a perfect fit for Madame Bovary.
But I think she’s been outclassed by Rebecca Ferguson: her performance in Villeneuve’s Dune makes Isabelle Huppert seem almost human in comparison.
Different generations and Huppert probably influenced her acting style a lot so hard to compare because of genre differences - Huppert never did that kind of films although she would’ve killed it probably.
Huppert comes from the so-called french minimalist school of acting - it’s a cinema-specific development of kammerspiele style doused in theatre cruel but instead of explosive expression it goes for imposive expression - the actor is a cage with a black panther inside mightily annoyed by their predicament not a beast themselves so to speak. This approach is more prominent in her latter work with Haneke and Chabrol. For instance with Chabrol she basically starts with Jeanne Moreau base and turns it into an Ozymandias statue.

