One of the most delightful actor-director partnerships right now is Isabelle Huppert and Hong Sangsoo. They’ve made three films together: In Another Country (2012), Claire’s Camera (2017), and now A Traveler’s Needs (2024). Hong’s spontaneous style of filmmaking holds an evident appeal for Huppert, who has often been identified with roles (and directors) involving an almost brittle sense of control. With Hong, she gets to enjoy the freedom of the random encounter and the curious conversation, leading unpredictably to an enigmatic moment of wisdom, or not.
In A Traveler’s Needs, she plays a language tutor named Iris who has a near-therapeutic style of teaching: she asks each student questions about how they feel about this or that aspect of their life, then scribbles sentences for them to learn that somehow digest these findings. As she goes from one student to the next, we learn a little more about Iris’s life but not quite how she found herself working as a translator, or even where she’s headed from there. She doesn’t seem to mind very much, and her most meaningful relationship seems to be with a pleasant young man whom she rooms with. She marches to the beat of her own drum, in what sneaks from initial oddity into becoming one of Hong’s most poignant portraits.
Huppert adheres to an incredibly dense schedule of film and theater at a time in her career when another star in her position might cherry-pick or simply preside. I interviewed her when she was in town with A Traveler’s Needs for the New York Film Festival, clad in Balenciaga, and seeming positively tickled to talk about working with Hong. (At one point she was simply recounting an entire scene beat-for-beat and chuckling.) We talked about Hong’s—and Iris’s—methods, what appeals to her about his films, and what tastes she shares with her curious character.
Nicolas Rapold: Let’s talk about the process.
Isabelle Huppert: It’s all about the process.
NR: Well, first, how many days were you shooting?
IH: This one was 13 days. The first one, In Another Country, 12 years ago, was nine days, and the second one, Claire's Camera, was six days. So this one was a lot. And one day we didn't even shoot because there was too much rain.
NR: I read that you get your lines in the morning.
IH: Yeah. I used to get them the day before, or during the night. Now it's later. Sometimes when you go on set. And then you have to learn it really quick.
NR: Does that mean that you have to shoot in the afternoon?
IH: No, no, no, because we start really early. No, I just have to learn it very quickly. But I think he uses this insecurity, because in life you don't necessarily know what you are going to say the next second or the next minute. He uses this kind of “uncomfort,” which is good, you know. So you don't just say the lines automatically. It’s just like we're thinking it then, and it's always in order to capture this on camera.
NR: Is it also spontaneous, how he sets up scenes or chooses locations?
IH: Location is really one of the key things to what he does. I think doing a movie with Hong Sangsoo is such an amazing lesson of cinema. I'm not a director myself, and I don't have any wish to become a director. But I wish that any aspiring director would come to his set and see him [in action], because even as an actress, I'm fascinated by the process. It's really not what you do, it's how you do it, which for me might be the best definition of movie making. That makes a big difference between Citizen Kane [1941] and a different film.
And you really experience this day by day when you do a movie with Hong Sangsoo. Of course, when you do a movie with anyone else too. But with Hong Sangsoo, it's more palpable because there is no script. There is no role. There is no story. So what is it? There is time. There is space. There is a location. And at the end of the day, you have a film, you know? I could do two movies a year with him. I mean, I could do 52, because it's only one week.
NR: How does his style play out when he begins directing a scene?
IH: It's a very good question. As I'm listening to you, I have a hard time myself [explaining]. I was watching that first scene last night before I was leaving the house, and I thought, “How did it happen, how did it happen?” It's like a little miracle. It was the first day of shooting—he goes more or less chronologically—and I have this girl in front of me, and I'm trying to say things to her, and there is of course no indication, but there is a very strong dialogue. It's very, written, and of course, very well written. And then we have these pauses and silences. And this little green tape. I mean, the whole thing is inspiring.
NR: Was that in the script, for example, when Iris wraps green tape around a pencil?
IH: There is no script.
NR: What do the notes look like then?
IH: Just typed lines. But the green [tape], it's funny you asked, because when I saw it I thought, "Was it written or did I do it?" I might have done it myself.
NR: The last time we spoke you were talking about the importance of costuming to your character.
IH: Yes.
NR: So how did you choose the dress and the green sweater?
IH: Everything you do to prepare a film with Hong Sangsoo is like you were already doing a Hong Sangsoo film. Also, the decision to make a film is always out of nowhere. He was in Paris. There was a retrospective of his films at the Cinémathèque française. So I emailed him. I said, "We should see each other again. We haven't seen each other since I guess Claire’s Camera." I was supposed to have dinner with him. I was coming back from far away, a foreign country where I was working. When I got to Paris, he said, "Isabelle, I'm so sorry, I'm sick." I said, "No, you can't do that to me." We were supposed to meet in a restaurant not far from my house in the Quartier Latin. So I called him back and said, "Oh, let's just have a coffee. I’ll come to your place, don't worry.” He said okay.
So I go to his place, and he was sick, and he was with Kim Min-hee, of course. They were both sick, you know, scarves around them, a little tired. We started drinking, and after one hour, he looks at me and he said, “We shoot another film together.” I said, “Yes, of course we should.” That was maybe February or beginning of March. So we say goodbye to each other and then he says, “April 6, I will call you.” So on April 6, he called me and said, "Okay, we do the film." And then a week after, he said, "You fly on June."
After that, he called me a number of times and said, "Do you still have this little green dress you were wearing on In Another Country?" I said, “Yes, but not in this house. I don't have it here on me. I have no plans to go to the South of France to pick it up there.” So I tried a number of outfits and he was not too happy and I understood that he wanted me to wear a dress. So I made several proposals like I did in In Another Country, and sent him pictures. I put lots of dresses in my suitcase. The day I was leaving, a late flight, I took a little walk near my house, and I walked by this shop, not a great shop I have to say, just not my style. But I went to the shop and there was a little dress. I sent him the picture, and he said, “That's it.” So I bought the dress. And then there was this green jacket. “What about the green jacket?” It's perfect. And that was the costume.
I love it because I was already walking like I was in a Hong Sangsoo film, you know? I'm just looking, looking, and about to take the plane. I was already a traveler.
NR: How do you understand Iris?
IH: I think she's a little wicked. I think she's halfway between a fairy, like in a fairy tale, and a witch. A nice witch and a little wicked fairy. Because she goes into people's lives, goes into people's minds, goes into people's psyches, goes into people's unconscious. She represents Hong Sangsoo’s brain, I think: trying to know more about people and trying to make people know more about who they are.
NR: It’s funny because she did remind me a bit of a writer, or I guess a director, because she’s listening, listening, and then she creates.
IH: Yes, she writes. And I loved one of Hong Sangsoo’s previous films [The Novelist’s Film, 2022]. In French, we had a very nice title: La Romancière, le Film, et le heureux hasard, which means the “nice chance.” It's black-and-white, too. And at the end, when the color comes like a revelation, I was crying. I thought it was so moving.
NR: Yes, that color reminded me of a Jonas Mekas film.
IH: Oui! Complètement! Absolutely.
NR: Iris also seems a bit like a therapist, when she helps them.
IH: Exactly. Yeah, and she takes the money. Like a therapist.
NR: There’s another writer in the film, the famous poet whose statue they visit. Did Hong talk about his significance?
IH: He doesn't say much, but I think he's a great poet. He really says very little, and most of the time he comes and picks me up at the airport, which is very unusual. You can't think of a director coming to the airport and picking you up. Or he and Kim Min-hee would drive me back to the airport. And I asked him, “What do you read?” Because you want to know more about him. And he said, “I don't read any modern books. I like to read old books again.” And I said, “Do you watch films?” He said, “No, I don't watch films.” You wonder where his inspiration comes from. For me, he's a bit of a genius.
NR: It seems to me that he's the most successful independent filmmaker right now in a way.
IH: Of course! On In Another Country, it was still what could look like a crew, with a continuity woman who was also an assistant, who was also whatever. But it was a little group of people, and we would have lunch every day in this sea resort where we were shooting. And on Claire’s Camera too, you know, there was a cameraman. Now, there's no one. It's only him with a tiny little camera. And a girl, not even with a Nagra, but with the boom. And Kim Min-hee, but she’s also producing and is not always there.
NR: The scenes have such interesting rhythms and you never know what’s coming next. Like the scene with the parents of the daughter you’re teaching.
IH: Oh that’s so funny. When they end up drinking makgeolli.
NR: What’s going on with Iris and the husband?
IH: I don't know! This wink all of a sudden. It’s completely absurd and comes from nowhere. But then you do it, and it says a lot of things. She creates really strong connections with people. And I think it's hilarious. The other actor is really funny. He was in In Another Country. And the actress is really good too. I love the way at the end, she breaks, and that's always so poetic. And I love the shot on the dog.
NR: Yeah, just when you think you're understanding a situation, Hong goes to another point of view entirely.
IH: Exactly. "Ah, he's so threatening.” [Iris says about the dog.] So funny.
NR: There’s also Iris’s relationship with the young man she boards with. It’s interesting—he clearly admires her independence.
IH: And you don't know whether it is friendship. Well, of course, it's economical because they share the rent, which is very important. Many relationships can also be economical, even between husband and wife. In the end, it's friendship, but the [young man’s] mother is so jealous that she makes a fantasy of their relationship as being love. She's jealous of her son's freedom.
NR: There’s a double edge to Iris’s independence, I felt, because it can lead her to withdrawing too. At one point she’s sleeping in the park.
IH: Yeah. But also she's lonely. And of course, she's never emotional. That’s also what I love about Hong's films. You never see the normal emotion that you would—but emotion is really there, oh my god. For me he makes you feel everything without saying anything. And he takes you to death, also, when they go to the grave of the poet who killed himself when he was 28 years old.
NR: There are these intriguing lines that get repeated, like when Iris asks about how people feel when they make music.
IH: Oui! What do you feel? What do you really feel? Do you feel you could have become a piano star, or do you feel pleasure? Do you think that you missed your life? What does it mean for you to play?
NR: I couldn't help but remember what you say in interviews when people ask you what you feel when you're acting.
IH: And I basically feel nothing.
NR: When you're in the moment...
IH: Yeah, because for me it's exactly what it is in a Hong Sangsoo’s film: there is nothing you can anticipate. And that's what he does, he does not anticipate. It's about the present time. I think that if you would prepare—and I have nothing [no problem] with preparation—you would lose something. Because he really captures what happens the moment you do it, the moment you meet all these people.
NR: So, have you ever had makgeolli?
IH: I love makgeolli. Oh my god, so good! I didn't make that part up. I mean, I don't drink two bottles a day [as Iris says she does]. But I'm not very much into, you know, whiskey, sake. I don't like all these, but makgeolli, oh my god, it's like milk, a bit sweet, and really good.
NR: I really like it too. And when I would say I liked makgeolli in Korea, it felt a little like in the scene with Iris: people would seem a little amused.
IH: I remember at the last dinner, we only drank makgeolli. That was so good.
NR: Besides the Hong Sangsoo movie, you have a lot coming up. There’s the award at the Lumière festival.
IH: Oui! In two weeks. Yeah.
NR: And I read somewhere that you'll be shooting a Dario Argento film.
IH: Yes. We still haven't got the script yet, but it's a remake of an old Mexican film. It's really great.
NR: Do you know when you start shooting?
IH: Hopefully next year.
NR: What’s after the Lumière Festival?
IH: I'm not sure what I will be shooting next, I still have to make choices. But I'm actually touring four plays right now. One of them is Berenice by Racine, staged by Romeo Castellucci. He's a great Italian stage director. And then I have a Bob Wilson production touring right now. It's a monologue about Mary [Queen of Scots] called Mary Said What She Said.
NR: Was that at the Barbican?
IH: Yeah. And I'm taking it to Korea, to Seoul. I hope to see Hong.
NR: Maybe you'll do another movie with him.
IH: Yeah, maybe I'll do another film. And then I'm taking Mary Said What She Said to New York next February, at the Skirball theater.
NR: Are you seeing anything at the New York Film Festival while you’re here?
IH: Oh yes, I saw Leos Carax’s film yesterday. That'll be the only one I'll be able to see. I was really impressed and touched also. I thought it was brilliant. Of course it's [in the] great heritage of Godard and Artavazd Peleshyan, you know, the great Armenian director. But that's really a Leos Carax film, and so powerful and so personal. It's only 40 minutes, it’s like a diary. And it’s very funny.
NR: I think it's magic what he does.
IH: I think it's magical. I loved the discussion [afterward], too. What he said was so smart and also very simple. What was it he said...
NR: About eggs, that he's a bad omelet?
IH: Yeah, of course—it's exactly what I thought when I saw the shot: you don't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Do we have this expression in English?
NR: Same thing, yeah.
IH: I love the noise [in It’s Not Me, 2024], the way the eggs are cooking.
NR: I'm sure you've been watching Carax’s movies throughout his career.
IH: He was an intern on Every Man for Himself [1980], Godard.
NR: Really? Did you meet him while doing that movie, or you only knew later that he worked on it?
IH: I learned later that he was an intern.
NR: That's amazing. I thought about Godard a little with Hong, because of how Godard got more and more homemade toward the end.
IH: Of course. The way Hong operates reminds me a lot of how Godard did. Hong Sangsoo is often compared to Rohmer, which I never really understood, it’s only because people talk a lot. I mean, this dog image [in A Traveler’s Needs], for instance—this could have happened in a Godard film!
A Traveler’s Needs screens this evening, November 22, and throughout the next few weeks, at Film Forum. It is also doing a week-long run Film at Lincoln Center. This evening’s screening at Film Forum will be introduced by Korea Society’s Senior Director of Arts & Culture Jay Oh.
