Hong Sang-soo’s comedies of manners don’t often elicit chuckles, per se, but they’re not meant to; the prolific Korean filmmaker, now on his thirty-somethingth film, is far more interested in the mirthful smirk. In one modestly-adorned slice of domestic minimalism after another, Hong plants his cameras firmly on a tripod (stopping only to pan or zoom as absolutely needed) and lets his characters just … talk. And who better to inspire those conversations than Isabelle Huppert, whose European sensibility Hong has already leveraged in two prior pictures: “In Another Country” and “Claire’s Camera.” She’s often a fish-out-of-water in the Seoul-set climes of Hong’s pictures, a mystery to the entranced and bewildered Koreans whose paths she crosses. And in their latest collaboration, “A Traveler’s Needs,” they find a new, doubly hypnotic rhythm.
Where “In Another Country” positioned Huppert as a blinkered tourist in three different modes, and “Claire’s Camera” as a helpful friend to a woman in crisis, this film’s Iris is the ultimate enigma. When we first meet her, she’s teaching a young pianist (Yunhee Cho) how to speak French using a decidedly unusual method: No textbooks, no joint speaking of French, just rote memorization of conversations they have in English, that she then translates into French and records for them to listen to and repeat. It’s an unorthodox approach, and one student (Lee Hye-young) even calls her out on it; “I have no ulterior motive,” Iris protests. But one does get the feeling she’s making this up on the fly, an improvised technique meant to help her earn money while she lives in a suburb of Seoul with a young, twentysomething roommate (Ha Seong-guk) whose mother raises an eyebrow at their arrangement.
But even if her pupils don’t learn a word of French, they often exit the conversations feeling changed or invigorated in some way. Hong is fascinated by the repeated quotidian rhythms of life, and scenes and situations repeat themselves in different permutations. Here, Iris has the same modus operandi with anyone she meets or teaches: She listens to them play an instrument—sometimes a piano, sometimes a guitar—and wonders aloud what they were feeling while they played. Her questions grow more probing until new layers open up in the conversation, and she suddenly grows a kind of platonic intimacy with them.
We see these scenes play out with Hong’s signature patience, all locked-in frames and unfussy cinematography; we feel like a fly on the wall to very halting, naturalistic conversations between people. And Huppert barely ever gives up the game, letting us interrogate every giving smile and provocatively brushed shoulder to figure out what her deal even is. When she hugs her roommate and cries, “Thank you for being my friend!” does she mean it? Is she hiding deeper feelings?
It helps, of course, that it’s Isabelle Huppert, dressed in an unassuming green cardigan and straw hat and glowing nonetheless. Huppert matches the modest cadence of her co-stars, underplaying almost to a whisper; it’s an interesting choice, one that seems to tee us up to the idea that there’s something more Machiavellian up her sleeve. Maybe she’s on the level, or maybe she’s a con artist. But her motivations could be as simple as, well, a traveler’s needs—for shelter, companionship, and purpose. Really, she’s less teaching French as she is getting people to unburden their greatest wants and anxieties, through something as simple as a conversation. (When she asks the piano player whether she likes playing, she initially says yes; it’s only after more pressing that she confesses that it always makes her feel inadequate.)
Nestled between every slow zoom of a friendly dog and simple B-roll of a koi pond lie these simple encounters, whispers of human connection facilitated by a kind of femme capricieuce toward unsuspecting students, passersby, and friends. She’s practically ghostlike, with no interior life of her own save her impact on the people around her. But that seems the charm of Hong’s film; she upsets the equilibrium of her surroundings in ways that don’t destroy, but illuminate. Later on, her face appears in an extreme close-up, disrupting the staid, waist-up camerawork that signify Hong’s work. In a movie full of muted emotions, this shot screams at us for understanding.
“A Traveler’s Needs” is, per Hong’s work, intensely mercurial and difficult to pin down into any one thing. Its rhythms are patient, easing you into one subtly profound moment of everyday human connection after another. Sometimes, it’s as simple as listening to someone play the piano or the recorder (poorly, in one of the film’s few deliberate guffaws) for another person. Or allowing someone the courtesy of translating a poem on a rockface into your native language. This kind of free spirit is something Huppert can play in her sleep, and, if you’re allergic to the steady pace of Hong’s films, you might just join her. But that drowsiness often works in his favor, even in ones that feel unevenly structured (the back half is not nearly as entrancing as the front).
In Hong’s movies, conversations are battles, and words are weapons used to strike down the neuroses of even the gentlest of combatants. “Traveler’s” is no different a battlefield.
