‘A Traveler’s Needs’ Review – Hong Sang-soo And Isabelle Huppert Journey Through Seoul In A Ruminative Ramble

In 2022, the current Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival, Dennis Lim, interviewed Hong Sang-soo in The New Yorker, introducing him as only the foremost stalwart of South Korean cinema should be introduced: With the tried-and-true description that the director has been linked to for decades. “It is a critical truism—and only partially true—that [Sangsoo] makes the same movie over and over,” Lim wrote. He went on to describe the various similarities that course through Hong’s filmography, from the clumsy communication between his characters to how they use alcohol to fuel philosophical conversation, often while seated around a small table. “But to accuse Hong of repeating himself,” Lim argued, “misses the point. Repetition in his films is both subject and structuring device… Hong finds meaning in the subtlest variations, coaxing compelling moral dramas from prosaic scenarios.”

The operative word there – prosaic – is doing more heavy lifting than it has to, but that’s nothing new. Viewers (a term used broadly) tend to approach Hong’s films at face value, noticing the director’s minimalist production value and familiar conceits and dismissing them as dry, even unromantic films about uninteresting people. This, in and of itself, is a critical truism that is as factual as the notion that Hong makes the same movie over and over again, a statement that could be seen as true enough yet says nothing of value in regard to the many ways it’s wholly false. Take A Traveler’s Needs, for example: Hong’s latest feature is as much of a walk-and-talk dramedy of manners as any of his other 30-plus films, but its exploration of humanity is operating on a different register than a number of his previous works. Sure, it maintains the general ideas that have coursed through everything from 2011’s The Day He Arrives to 2023’s In Our Day and everything before and after it, but the differences are where a conversation about Hong begins.

Those “general ideas” involve someone traveling from one country to another, typically South Korea or, more specifically, Seoul. This person is often in search of something, whether it be a respite from troubles they’ve abandoned; love from a familiar face or a stranger (the former tends to make matters more interesting); or a fresh start in a land foreign to their own. Here, the subject is Iris (Isabelle Huppert in her third collaboration with Hong), a woman who spends her days teaching French to local strangers in a roundabout style that might try the patience of the most carefree soul. She starts by having conversations in English, then translating them – loosely, mind you – into French, and finally copying the sentences over to index cards. Is she qualified for this position? Does she even enjoy it? It’s fair to say that Iris’ ends and means justify one another, providing her with just enough money to get by and a fair bit of philosophical stimulation on the side.

When Iris isn’t teaching, she’s downing as many as two bottles of Makgeolli (Korean rice wine) per day, playing her recorder in the middle of an abandoned park (her musical gifts leave plenty to be desired, suggesting that perhaps she is the one who vacated the park with her songs), or blindly touring Seoul with the hopes that she might encounter someone new to probe. A number of Hong regulars pop in for a few scenes, one being Iris’ first student (Yunhee Cho, exquisite in 2021’s In Front of Your Face), an unfulfilled woman who Iris pushes to reveal her true feelings about everything from her piano skills to her late father. While we feel as though we’ve been left in the dark somewhat, it’s Iris who takes what she requires away from these challenging conversations, personal nuggets from people she’s only just met serving as fuel to help her through the daily slog of loneliness and endless possibilities. It’s at once beautiful and heartbreaking, characteristics that the film has in spades while remaining one of the more jovial projects Hong has made in recent memory.

As per usual, Hong not only wrote and directed the film, but shot, edited, produced, and composed its score, but it’s his scripts that always afford us opportunities to decipher greater meaning and hidden depths to his work. Here, it’s as if we’ve held up a mirror to the film itself as we undergo that process, its events taking a similar shape to our efforts at mining complex truths from Hong’s words. Yet if you consider its title alone, A Traveler’s Needs is the most direct feature Hong has made in years. It’s a film about a strange woman in a strange land without direction nor a compass to help her find it, but what it explores most of all is her needs as a traveler, as it were. Like most of Hong’s past characters, Iris has a desire for love, one that is broached within the film. But budding romance, especially the complicated kind, is less of a focal point here than it is in the director’s previous Huppert vehicles, 2012’s In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera. In A Traveler’s Needs, the mere possibility of love is enough for its characters to hold onto, while their principal goals – most of which they are discovering just as gradually as we are – take precedence.

Huppert is certainly worth the price of admission alone, the indomitable performer turning in the sort of sly, comedic, deeply intellectual work that has become an expectation at this point in her career. But Hong, while unsung in the mainstream, has turned in yet another work of intellect and emotion that can be met on any number of terms. Theoretically, you could view A Traveler’s Needs as a sort of Before-esque ramble, a journey where a woman discovers herself through the kindness and openness of strangers. Or, you could see it as a contemplative, melancholic work, one that holds a microscope up to our own ever-emptying lives and tells us what areas are most vulnerable. That’s what makes him such a fascinating director, a math question with the same problem, yet a different answer each time you do the work. Those circumstances, while occasionally confounding, are sure to be far more stimulating than the alternative.

A Traveler’s Needs is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Cinema Guild.