World’s Richest Woman Scandal Hits Big Screen with Isabelle Huppert!

What’s it About?

The Richest Woman in the World: her beauty, her intelligence, her power. A writer-photographer: his ambition, his audacity, his madness. Their whirlwind romance. A wary heiress fighting to be loved. A vigilant butler who knows more than he reveals. Family secrets. Astronomical gifts. A battle where everything is fair game.

The Richest Woman in the World revisits a highly publicized real-life event in France, previously the subject of a documentary: the Liliane Bettencourt affair. While the official synopsis does not directly mention names, and the characters’ names have been changed, this is indeed the main inspiration for the film.

Inspired by a Widely Publicized Case

While clearly signaling a desire to diverge and only loosely follow the real contours. Thierry Klifa’s film is not at all a documentary in tone but swings between farce, significant comedic moments, and a much more dramatic side.

“When I started working on this screenplay (with Cédric Anger, then Jacques Fieschi), I was initially drawn in by the story like everyone else. But if it had just been a docudrama, I wouldn’t have been interested in simply visualizing what we’ve read in the newspapers,” explains Thierry Klifa.

I quickly realized there was something else hidden beneath it

“I quickly realized there was something else hidden beneath, and what fiction would allow me to do. I was interested in exploring the intimate, talking about a story of love and disillusionment. It’s about a daughter who understands that her mother can love—especially in a way she has never loved her—with the arrival of Pierre Alain Fantin. It was also intriguing to delve into a milieu not often covered in French cinema, the world of the ultra-rich, this grand French bourgeois, Catholic, industrial milieu.”

A Tone of Farce

In our interview, Isabelle Huppert comments on her role: “I was drawn by the tone I anticipated from the film, which was conveyed through the flavor of the dialogues, the sequence of scenes. I sensed we might adopt a tone sometimes akin to farce, sometimes theatrical, sometimes operatic. All of this was at play in the film and especially allowed me a lot of freedom to do exactly what I wanted with this character.”

There’s an exaggeration brought about by the character of Fantin, played wonderfully by Laurent Lafitte

In some respects, this role, as envisioned by Thierry Klifa, reminds one of her performance in François Ozon’s “8 Women” (also premiering this Wednesday with his adaptation of Albert Camus’s “The Stranger”). With Laurent Lafitte, she forms an already iconic duo, with dialogues and scenes that will inevitably provoke reactions. She reunites with the actor almost a decade after “Elle” by Paul Verhoeven.

A Role Reminiscent of “8 Women”?

Regarding the parallels between this film and “8 Women,” Isabelle Huppert responds, “Honestly, I would never have thought of it. And yet, I also like to say that there’s a form of theatricality in the tone of the film. I mentioned the tone of farce. There’s an exaggeration that is largely brought by the character of Fantin, played wonderfully by Laurent Lafitte, and this might contribute to these reminiscences, to these connections we make with other films, as if she were almost caricaturing herself in this character, or as if, suddenly, meeting Fantin allowed her to access this slight exaggeration of herself, something that had been dormant. The way she frees herself is to overdo it a bit, as was the case in François Ozon’s film.”

On the comedic aspect of the film, Thierry Klifa notes, “It’s true that there are things that are very funny, but it’s very funny because the situations are very excessive. These characters also belong to a time. They are very abrasive, very corrosive. Whether they are cynical? I don’t really know, but there is a violence.”

The Richest Woman in the World hits theaters this Wednesday, October 29, 2025.