Written and directed by Hong Sang-soo
A chilled glass of water compared to the pint-sized can of Monster that is a lot of mainstream filmmaking, Hong Sang-soo’s A Traveler’s Needs is a humorous and unadorned look at the quirks of our shared existence. As a strange stranger in a foreign land, Isabelle Huppert is a surprisingly good comedienne in this comedy of manners, but the real laugh is that which she draws from her castmates.
Huppert plays Iris, a French woman living in South Korea who teaches locals French. She employs an unorthodox method, teaching the heart rather than the brain. Pressing her students to describe their feelings about a certain activity or person, she writes it down in French, and instructs them to repeat the thing over and over again until they feel it keenly. From that connection, learning grows, she says.
When asked of her background, she also volunteers she has no background in teaching, language or otherwise, and she picked up this gig two months ago.
You watch A Traveler’s Needs and realize the untapped comedic potential of the stumbling interactions that arise between those limited in the one language they share. It’s not because there’s strange phrasing or surprising word choice, but because the nervous energy is so palpable and that clearly is a bit of a slip and slide into comedy.
Which emotions do we default to, which common ground do we gravitate towards? An awkward silence when the vibes are bad is soul-destroying stuff, but when there’s an amicable air for it to pass through, it becomes both relatable and giddy, and the sensation transcends any language barrier.
Iris is entirely on her own wavelength, and you can tell Huppert has a lot of fun with the improvisational style of Hong Sang-soo, who lets the camera roll with little guidance and grants space to the actors who can improvise within it. For Huppert, it produces a burst of laughter and jazz hands at certain times, and another character has a real self-sustaining chuckle over a pen Iris has in her bag. These odd little behavioral intrusions are their own sprinkling of magic dust, surprising in a medium that becomes steadily more mechanical and rooted in predetermined processes.
Sang-soo’s style is as minimalist as it gets, and it grants so much space to character and their interplay with others. The movie is a string of lessons held together by Iris in one way or another, and even if no encounter goes the way you expect, Sang-soo’s unvarnished direction and cinematography makes it all go down easy.
This style cuts both ways, and there are certain scenes that could have used another pass. One, for example, spins off into a histrionic cadence that doesn’t quite harmonize with the rest of Sang-soo’s movie, comfortably at rest in its laid-back encounters.
A Traveler’s Needs is a bit of a chuckle fest, a charming movie entirely its own, and thanks to Sang-soo’s signature peeled-back style, like nothing else. Full of the awkward spaces in between people, it’s jittery, poking and fumbling unfurling is a breath of fresh air from the polished and eloquent movies we’re used to, pulling its points from the moments that go askew, rather than the hefty, self-important events we usually wring drama from.
Mikkel Frederiksen 