Speaking at the Busan International Film Festival, the French star said that Isabelle Huppert has not been pushed aside by artificial intelligence yet, but she heard that she will soon be able to speak Korean and Japanese.
“I didn’t know I spoke Korean. I just know how to say ‘annyeonghaseyo.’ [hello]Huppert said at a press conference for Marc Fitoussi’s comedy “All About Corinne,” which screened in the festival’s Gala Presentation section.
When asked if AI could eliminate acting jobs, Huppert said, “Acting is really me. So I haven’t been threatened and faced with this scary possibility yet.” “So far I’ve seen my face still on the screen and I hope it stays that way,” he added.
Huppert acknowledged that AI is a threat in theory, but compared it to the fear that theaters will disappear or that records will sell out, only vinyl will return. “Maybe I’m wrong to be optimistic, I don’t know,” he said.
Huppert also confirmed that she will star in a movie by Dario Argento. “I’m very happy with it. I think it’ll happen next year,” he said.
Fitoussi, whose “All About Corinne” was his fourth collaboration with Huppert, said that he was in the early stages of a new project and wanted to work with her again.
Fitoussi said: “It’s a little early to talk about it, but in any case, I saw a film with Joan Crawford that really excited me, and I’m quite tempted to imagine a remake with Isabelle.”
“I hope so,” Huppert replied.
In “All About Corinne,” which premiered in Locarno, Huppert plays Corinne Maclou, an experienced extra who never gives up on her acting dream and pursues her friendship with another actor. Sandrine Kiberlain and other well-known artists appear as themselves. The film will be released in South Korea next spring.
When asked how she approached being an extra, Huppert said that the strength of Fitoussi’s script and dialogue did much of the work, and that while being an extra wasn’t a job like any other, it was still a job. “I am doing extra work but I can also play any other profession. So it did not create any difficulty for me,” he said.
Huppert disputed the notion that the film cast only a sympathetic eye on the acting profession, noting that it conveyed a certain cruelty in many cases. He said he saw the film industry in the story as an example of a highly hierarchical society. “Obviously that’s true of any similar organization where there are those who have power and those who don’t. It’s not necessarily about demonizing the world of cinema either,” he said.
Fitoussi said the project began almost as a joke, with the idea of casting one of France’s busiest actors who had never been able to act. Before writing a word, he called Huppert. “I started writing because he said yes,” he said. Before starting the script, he also contacted Kiberlain and the other actors who played them.
The director first explored the world of extras in the 2008 documentary “Des Figurants” and quoted one of the documentary’s subjects, a woman who wore a pink scarf in the hope of attracting the director’s attention. Corinne’s strange lock of hair serves the same purpose in the new film. Fitoussi said, “In any case, these are characters that I inevitably find very touching because they are a little bit pathetic, a little bit invisible. And it was nice to make them heroic throughout a movie.”
He also revealed that Huppert started writing a film in which she would play a truck driver, but stopped writing after learning that Juliette Binoche was filming an American film in a similar role. He said he would probably return to that scenario one day.
Huppert arrived in Busan on the morning of the press conference after reading a novel by Nobel laureate Han Kang with her co-star Lee Hye-young in Hong Sang-soo’s “Needs of a Traveler” in Seoul. The duo performed it for the first time at the Avignon Festival this year, where Korea was the guest country. This was Robert Wilson’s second appearance in Seoul after performing the song “Mary Said What She Said”.
This is Huppert’s third visit to Busan and Fitoussi’s first visit to Korea. Huppert, who starred in three Hong films, was elected the first female president of the French Cinematheque this year.