Just when you thought you knew what to expect from Hong Sang-soo, South Korea’s most prolific auteur has crafted his funniest film in years with his 31st feature, “A Traveler’s Needs.”
This delightfully mischievous comedy, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Berlin back in February, marks Hong’s third collaboration with Isabelle Huppert following 2012’s “In Another Country” and “Claire’s Camera” both released in 2017. To round off that unlikely triptych, the pair embark on an adventure without purpose, or so it would seem as we follow a French woman named Iris as she wanders adrift through Seoul in search of who knows what. For long stretches of time, Iris practices the recorder (badly) in community parks or sits alone, savoring her beloved Korean rice wine, aka Makgeolli, in between bites of bibimbap. Of the titular needs this traveler requires, money ends up being one of them, so she turns to teaching French, which is where we first meet her, mid-lesson, with a local Korean student.
The woman in question, played by Hong regular Yunhee Cho, practices the piano for Iris as they talk with no apparent structure to the lesson in place. At first it’s not even clear that this is a lesson at all. Rather casually, Iris asks her student (in English) how she feels while she plays, to which the woman replies, “happy.” Unimpressed, Huppert’s tutor digs deeper until she finally elicits a rawer confession which spins the conversation 180 degrees in the other direction. It turns out Yunhee’s character is actually quite unhappy with her skill — unable to play piano at the level she believes she should. Via this probing, Iris cuts through societal pretense to the heart of what’s really going on, even if audiences themselves aren’t initially sure what’s going on themselves.
It’s at this point that Iris begins writing the woman’s words down in French and then recites it in a tape machine which she gives the student to practice with before their next lesson. No actual French is shared between them in the lesson itself. Later on, the pair venture out and happen across a large rock where the name of the student’s late father has been engraved. Out of this second emotional scene comes another teaching moment, and then we move on to the next pupil of the day, an older woman (played by another Hong regular, Lee Hye-young) who’s somewhat more skeptical of Iris and her unorthodox teaching methods. She too plays an instrument, a classic guitar this time, which leads them down a similar line of questioning.
“One day you may wake up and your heart has assimilated this foreign language,” says Iris, telling her students that it’s only through emotion one can find true meaning in learning the essence of another tongue. The fact she explains this unproven yet enticing theory through English speaks to the multiple levels of translation that are simultaneously occurring, not just in the lessons, but throughout the film as a whole. We too as an audience are working hard to decipher the dynamics and hidden meanings embedded in this mishmash of French and Korean cultural norms filtered through the shared use of English as a language that unifies people who don’t speak it as their mother tongue.
There’s a moment between Iris and one of her students where a line of poetry written by Korean lyricist Yun Dong-ju, known for his poems dedicated to Korean independence against Japan, is translated as: “My path is always a new path.” It’s a key moment that embodies the liminal space Iris lives through, not to mention how Hong manipulates and works within that limbo through the mirroring of each act and how they’re connected. Yet the word “path” as it’s used here is sometimes deciphered as “road” in some translations online, which is not incorrect, but further emphasizes the subjectivity of translation as an art form in itself and why learning through emotions can be more impactful than studying the actual rules of grammar.
Hong breaks his own unwritten rule for the film by act three, where the lessons we’ve observed that echo and repeat themselves suddenly give way to something new. It’s at this point we finally learn something semi-tangible about Iris as we follow her back to the apartment of the young Korean man (Ha Seong-guk) she’s living with. He’s entranced with her, and she might very well be in love with him, which doesn’t go down well with the boy’s mother. Upon her arrival, Iris goes off to do what she does best, which is to casually stroll through the streets of Seoul again as the pair hash things out.
The laughs subside a tad once the focus moves away from Iris, which is noticeable given how amusing the film is up until that point. Hong’s known to toy with his own idiosyncratic sense of humor, elusive to the point where you sometimes wonder if you’ve missed the punchline or whether he’s even in on the joke. But here, Huppert channels Hong’s impish tendencies with purposeful awkwardness. When Iris’s hand lingers on the arm of her second pupil’s husband, you don’t know where to look, even though the moment is most likely an innocent one (from her side, at least).
As Huppert bemuses and disconcerts local Koreans with carefree abandon, the legendary French actress reminds us that she can be far less serious than her work for the likes of Michael Haneke and Paul Verhoeven might suggest. In fact, she’s often at her most enchanting in these kinds of roles, delightfully playing with co-stars and the camera through charmingly earnest, scatty and even slapstick moments at various turns which constantly shift without effort, making her actual persona hard to pin down. Hong’s camera is the same, refusing to budge from expansive wide shots during intimate reveals where you want to be closer to the characters, only to zoom away to seemingly random surroundings with a kitsch flair, as if even he can’t bear to endure the awkwardness that’s been engineered by Iris.
As is so often the case for Hong, his latest is a gentle, hypnotically watchable film that breezes by as Iris does herself, dallying around Seoul in a loose summer dress and her striking bright-green cardigan. But “A Traveler’s Needs” is deceptively simple in that regard. Through its cyclical structure and detached protagonist, the film plays in a liminal space of Hong’s making that challenges what it can mean to assimilate in a land that’s not your own. With no backstory and no apparent future either, Iris exists only in the here and now, an alluring apparition who we can project our own thoughts and ideas onto, like an expat who’s free to start anew and redefine themselves in a whole new world. It’s this central mystery around Huppert’s lead that keeps the film in your mind long after it’s ended, anchored by one of the most unique and exciting actor-director collaborations in contemporary cinema.
Grade: B+
The Cinema Guild will release “A Traveler’s Needs” in select theaters on Friday, November 22.
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