Isabelle Huppert on AI: 'It Really Is Me Acting'

Isabelle Huppert told the Busan International Film Festival that artificial intelligence has not yet taken her job. "It really is me acting. So I haven't yet been threatened, confronted with that admittedly grim prospect," the French actor said at a press conference for Marc Fitoussi's comedy "All About Corinne," screening in the festival's Gala Presentation section.

Asked whether AI is wiping out acting jobs, Huppert said: "So far I've seen that it's still my face on screen, and I hope that continues." She joked that she had heard she may soon be speaking Korean and Japanese. "I didn't know I spoke Korean. I just know how to say 'annyeonghaseyo' [hello]," she said.

Is AI an existential threat to actors?

Huppert allowed that AI is a threat in theory, but she compared the fears to earlier anxieties that cinemas would disappear or that records would die out — only for vinyl to make a comeback. "Maybe I'm wrong to be optimistic, I don't know," she said.

Her comments come as "All About Corinne," which premiered in Locarno, screens in Busan. The film stars Huppert as Corinne Maclou, a veteran extra who has never let go of her dream of acting, and follows her friendship with another actor. Sandrine Kiberlain and other well-known performers appear as themselves. The film will open in South Korea next spring.

How do you play an extra?

Huppert said the strength of Fitoussi's screenplay and dialogue did much of the work, and that while being an extra isn't a job like any other, it is still a job. "I play an extra, but I could just as well play any other profession. So for me it didn't present any particular difficulty," she said.

She pushed back on the idea that the film looks at the acting profession only with warmth, noting it carries a certain cruelty in many situations. She sees the film industry in the story as one example of a deeply hierarchical society. "Obviously that applies to any similar organization where there are those who have power and those who don't. It isn't necessarily about demonizing the world of cinema either," she said.

Why did Fitoussi write the film for Huppert?

Fitoussi, for whom "All About Corinne" marks a fourth collaboration with Huppert, said the project began almost as a joke — the idea of casting one of France's busiest actors as someone who never gets to act. He called Huppert before writing a word. "It's because she said yes that I started writing," he said. He also contacted Kiberlain and the other actors playing themselves before he began the script.

The director first explored the world of extras in a 2008 documentary, "Des Figurants," and borrowed from one of its subjects, a woman who wore a pink scarf in the hope of catching a director's eye. In the new film, Corinne's odd tuft of hair serves the same purpose. "In any case, these are characters I inevitably find very moving, because they're a bit like losers, a bit invisible. And it was nice to make them heroic for the length of a film," Fitoussi said.

He revealed that he had started writing a film in which Huppert would play a truck driver, but stopped after learning that Juliette Binoche had shot an American film in a similar role. He said he will likely return to that script one day.

What comes next for Huppert?

Huppert confirmed she will appear in a film by Dario Argento. "I'm very happy about it. I think it will be some time next year," she said.

Fitoussi said he is in the early stages of a new project and would like to work with Huppert again. "It's a bit too early to talk about it, but in any case I saw a film with Joan Crawford that really excites me, and imagining a remake with Isabelle tempts me quite a lot," he said. Huppert replied: "I hope so."

Huppert arrived in Busan the morning of the press conference after performing a reading of a novel by Nobel laureate Han Kang in Seoul with Lee Hye-young, her co-star in Hong Sang-soo's "A Traveler's Needs." The pair first staged it at the Avignon Festival, where Korea was the guest country this year. It was her second stage appearance in Seoul, following Robert Wilson's "Mary Said What She Said." This is her third visit to Busan and Fitoussi's first trip to Korea.

Huppert, who has appeared in three Hong films, was elected this year as the first female president of the Cinémathèque Française. With the Argento project due next year and a possible Crawford remake on the horizon, her screen presence looks set to remain, in her words, her own.