Hong Sang-soo’s minimal comedy drama about a French traveler in Seoul won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
Iris likes to lie on the rocks and drink makgeolli rice wine. She is in a foreign country with no money and no home, only a temporary shelter in her new friend’s small apartment. She teaches French to two Korean women to keep busy and make a living.
Hong Sang-soo’s new film is his third collaboration with the French star Isabelle Huppert. As in Claire’s Camera (2017) and In Another Country (2012), Huppert plays a mysterious foreigner. We know so little of Iris that all of her quirks are instantly memorable. She sticks colored tape on her ballpoint pen and sways a little bit as she walks on tiptoes. Other characters fill the gaps in her biography with their own fantasies, fears, and desires, as does the viewer.
Iris drifts across unfamiliar Seoul, and her movement is only partially revealed to the viewer. Her bright green sweater stands out against the regular interiors of Seoul apartments and blends into the trees in a park. Hong Sang-soo likes playing with reality—in his world, everything shimmers.
The film is organized as a series of encounters where the same phrases are repeated time and again. But the people saying them and their tone are always different. Underscoring these changes and variations, Hong Sang-soo makes them funny. Like his other films, A Traveler’s Needs is a comedy, if slightly melancholic.
Series and seasons are characteristic of Hong Sang-soo’s cinema in general, relieving him of the need to think of his films as «previous» or «outstanding, ” which is why awards surprise him («I don’t know what you saw in the film, ” he commented when receiving the Silver Bear).
The film will be screened in Korean, French, and English with Russian subtitles.
A Traveler’s Needs
Director: Hong Sang-soo
South Korea. 2024. 90 min. 16+
