Courtesy Jeonwonsa Film Company
If the IMDb logline for A Traveler’s Needs from Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo (In Our Day) seems to reveal very little, that’s because it’s right on the money. “A French woman drinks -makgeolli in Korea after losing her means of income, then teaches French to two Korean women,” it reads. And that’s precisely what happens.
Sang-Soo’s newest is a rather sparse affair, but rather than fostering any sense of meaning in -silence or subtextual urgency, it mostly plods along at a snail’s pace vacillating between moments that feel either improvisational, non-impactful or, in some dialog cases, borderline porn movie quality in their delivery.
Isabelle Huppert (Marianne) is Iris, a French woman adrift in South Korea for reasons we -never learn, who takes it upon herself to start teaching French to private clients. Iris feels a bit like a con woman in her methods—ones wherein she asks her clientele to examine their feelings in the moment, which she then translates to French and writes on an index card for them to practice saying. The idea, she tells a client, is that if a speaker can connect with a phrase emotionally, they’re better suited to internalizing that language and, thus, learning French. This seems awkward to at least one client, and we never really learn if the method works or doesn’t.
Awkwardness, then, becomes the hallmark of A Traveler’s Needs. And it comes in many forms, from the client who practices guitar for several real-world minutes of screen time to the mother of Iris’ seemingly naïve roommate who spends a good chunk of the film talking with her kid about bills and whether Iris is to be trusted. This setup becomes boring fast, and not in some indie-movie-makes-good-in-the-end way, but in a damn-this-is-actually-so-boring way.
Huppert is strangely magnetic despite the film’s lack of enjoyable narrative, and the small cast of supporting players are somehow memorable in their lack of notable charisma. It’s subtle, but Iris’ desperation should feel familiar to anyone who was ever unsure where their next meal might come from, and quiet moments of poetry come close to ekeing out an anchor point. But the film asks too much of its audience. Yes, as the logline suggests, the film features makgeolli—a rice wine popular in Korea—but we never learn if it’s meant to signify or symbolize anything in particular. Thus, the viewer is left to sift through the tediousness in search of an impetus. If Sang-soo is attempting to rob his audience of comfort by eschewing all but the flimsiest of narratives, then we might say mission accomplished. Too bad, then, that the 90 minutes it takes to wend through A Traveler’s Needs feels so very much longer.
5
+Huppert draws you in; glimpses of Korean life
-Dialogue feels like an afterthought; literally no payoff, emotional or otherwise
A Traveler’s Needs
Directed by Sang-Soo
With Huppert
Center for Contemporary Arts, NR, 90 min.
