Following on the trail of Crucifox, and picking up its scent, Isabelle Huppert, cunning and vulpine, tries out a range of exotic roles as actor and aesthete. An old lady has a factory to supply her with rouge. A headmistress wolf-whistles builders. Abducted girls call out from cupboards and crevices, and Pre-Raphaelite models complain. The spirit of Isabelle’s ideal home hangs in the air, drawing on histories and geographies both mythical and subversive; and ‘many rooms’-waiting rooms, fainting rooms, kitchens, sick rooms, parlours, television studios, convent cells- honeycomb the book. Her search takes her to the transgressive cubicles of the central Bluebeard sequence and culminates in a meeting with a 17th Century Mexican proto-feminist nun. There is fasting, feasting and fornication; the lamenting and celebrating of homes real, imaginary and ideal. The animal kingdom is ever-present, howling in doorways and undergrowth, belying a polite exterior. A heavenly dog presides. Flowers and demons abound.
