Nobody knows where the woman comes from. She is sitting on a park bench and diligently playing a child’s recorder. She says she is from France. With no money or means of supporting herself, she has been advised to teach French. This is how she comes to have two Korean women as her pupils. The woman likes to walk barefoot and to lie down on rocks. And when she is feeling up to it, she tries to see each instant in a non-verbal way and to live life as rationally as she can. But things remain as hard as ever. She relies on the Korean alcoholic drink of makgeolli to provide a bit of comfort every day.
EN
“What really attracted me in the first place was the perspective to work with Hong. I did two other films with Hong and his way of making films is unique. I only know him for doing films like this. So I was enthusiastic about repeating the experience. In fact, it's very difficult to project yourself in a story or in a role because there is no role and no story. What I really like about it is that there is much more than a role and much more than a story. There is just a way to capture the present moment and to capture a certain state of a person confronting a certain world. So you just have to be very much open to this vision. What I like about working with Hong is that you cannot really go the same way that you usually go with another director or with another way of working. It's really a unique experience because you can't consider that you have a a character. But at the end of the day you really have a character and you have somebody unique. I've seen the film and I was so touched because I think that the film says so much about someone's loneliness, someone's attempt to live, just to live simply and to connect with other people. At the end he really makes some kind of very philosophical statement about what it means to be alive, what it means to be a human being, what it means to be alone and what it means to be together. So a lot of very important subject matters.”
Isabelle Huppert1
“I cannot and I don't want to see myself as something [either a poet or a filmmaker], because it's always a hindrance. It doesn't help if you have something in front of you and you are running for it, then you lose all this organic movement inside you. You can have something in front you from time to time but not so much. You can have an objective for a while, or a pretext to go somewhere. But during this process of going there, what can happen is much more than what you aim for. In life, as a human being, or making films, it’s the same thing. [...]This might sound very irresponsible but I don’t know what I am doing in a way. I have some objective and I have kind of recognized a working method that I like, that I have developed. I believe in a certain ‘happening’ between people. Me and Isabelle, me and the weather, me and the places. All these things ‘happen’. I want to have my script, my few objectives, lead to the more abundant place where more things happen, and then I try to just capture them, and arrange them in a more natural way.”
Hong Sang-soo2
“She constantly questions everybody in an obsessive way, always asking the same question, which I think is very funny most of the time. It’s almost like she’s forcing everybody she meets to become aware of something, to come to terms, or deal with some kind of problem in a way. She forces them to tell themselves truths. That’s how she happens to be. Not like a guide but someone who really reveals people as she meets them. … She has a certain consciousness of what the world and she wants to make people become conscious of themselves. But she’s very malicious too. She knows what she’s doing. She makes people kind of questioning themselves all the time.”
Isabelle Huppert3
- 1Isabelle Huppert, “Berlinale Live 2024: Press Conference "A Traveler’s Needs",” YouTube, uploaded on 19 February 2024.
- 2Hong Sang-soo, “Berlinale Live 2024: Press Conference "A Traveler’s Needs",” YouTube, uploaded on 19 February 2024.
- 3Isabelle Huppert, “Berlinale Live 2024: Press Conference "A Traveler’s Needs",” YouTube, uploaded on 19 February 2024.
