Review: ‘A Traveler’s Needs,’ starring Isabelle Huppert

November 25, 2024

by Carla Hay

Isabelle Huppert and Kim Seung-yun in “A Traveler’s Needs” (Photo courtesy of The Cinema Guild)

“A Traveler’s Needs”

Directed by Hong Sang-soo

Korean, French and English with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Seoul, South Korea, the comedy/drama film “A Traveler’s Needs” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with one white person) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A French woman, who has recently immigrated to South Korea, starts working as a private French-language tutor with unconventional teaching methods.

Culture Audience: “A Traveler’s Needs” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of star Isabelle Huppert, filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, and talkative movies with arthouse sensibilities.

Kwon Hae-hyo, Isabelle Huppert and Lee Hye-young in “A Traveler’s Needs” (Photo courtesy of The Cinema Guild)

The comedy/drama “A Traveler’s Needs” offers a unique slice-of-life story of an unorthodox French-language tutor in South Korea. It’s best enjoyed by viewers who appreciate dialogue-driven movies in ordinary realistic settings. Everyone else will be bored.

Written and directed by Hong Sang-soo, “A Traveler’s Needs” had its world premiere at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury’s Silver Bear prize, the equivalent of second place for Best Picture. “A Traveler’s Needs” also screened at he 2024 New York Film Festival. “A Traveler’s Needs” is the third Hong Sang-soo movie to star Isabelle Huppert, after 2012’s “In Another Country” and 2017’s “Claire’s Camera.”

“A Traveler’s Needs” consists entirely of conversations in a very limited number of settings, usually in someone’s home or in a park. The movie’s protagonist Iris (played by Huppert) doesn’t say too much about herself. However, from conversations in the movie, viewers find out that Iris has recently moved to Seoul, South Korea, from her native France. She also has a fondness for drinking makgeolli, which is Korean rice wine.

Iris has recently decided to become a private tutor teaching the French language. Her first clients are affluent—not ultra-wealthy but upper-middle-clas. “A Traveler’s Needs” shows her meeting with two of these clients for the first time. Most of the characters in the movie are not identified by their names, but they offer glimpses into their lives in the time that Iris spends with them.

First, Iris is seen meeting with a woman in her 20s (played by Kim Seung-yun) in the student’s home. While they are talking, the student suddenly gets up to play the piano. When she’s finished, Iris asks the student what she felt when playing the piano.

The student replies, “I felt happy.” But Iris asks more probing questions until the student admits she wishes she were a better piano player. Iris takes notes on index cards and translates in French what the student said about her feelings. The movie soon reveals that this is how Iris wants to teach French.

At a nearby park, the student shows Iris a stone monument that has her father’s name on it. The student tells Iris that her father’s name is only the monument because he donated a large sum of money. The student says she’s a little embarrassed about it, but she tearfully adds, “He loved me very much.”

Next, Iris meets with an outspoken woman in her early 60s (played by Lee Hye-young), who is a CEO of an unnamed major company. Her mild-mannered and quiet husband (played by Kwon Hae-hyo), who has a flirtatious side, is not the one taking the French lessons, but he is her constant companion during this teaching session. The husband eventually reveals that he is an attorney who quit his law practice to become the “right-hand man” for his wife in her business.

These two spouses have a young adult daughter (played by Kang So-yi), who lives with them. According to the mother, this daughter quit her job about a year ago and is still looking for another job. The daughter doesn’t have any specific career goals in mind, just some “ideas.” The mother doesn’t seem to be too bothered by her daughter’s aimlessness.

The daughter also acts aloof when her mother asks her to come over and say hello in French to Iris. Even though this daughter took French for three years in high school, the daughter claims not to remember any French at all. Viewers are left to ponder what this family is really like behind closed doors, when there are no strangers who are visiting. These are questions that the movie doesn’t answer.

The CEO student is surprised and disappointed that Iris will not be teaching French by using textbooks but will be using index cards instead. This student also plays an instrument. During this session, she plays an acoustic guitar, but Iris excuses herself to go up on the couple’s rooftop lounge area to smoke a cigarette while the student plays the guitar. The spouses later joins Iris on the rooftop to smoke cigarettes too.

Iris asks the CEO student how she felt when she played the guitar. The student says she felt happy, But once agan, Iris prods the student for a more introspective answer, until the student admits she felt a little proud and a little annoyed because she likes her guitar playing but doesn’t feel she’s a “good-enough” guitar player to be at the playing skills that she wants. Iris did the same thing she did with the other student: She writes down those feelings in French and tells her student to memorize this translation.

Iris eventually admits to the couple that she has no training to be a French-language teacher and she’s trying a non-traditional way of teaching. Iris’ line of questioning sounds more like something a therapist would ask. It becomes obvious to observant viewers that Iris’ method of teaching is to get her students to express how they feel, and Iris then translates those feelings, with the intent being that her students are more likely to learn French if they learn sentences that are personally relatable to them.

And who exactly is Iris? It’s a mystery that “A Traveler’s Needs” doesn’t quite answer. But some clues emerge when Iris is seen with the person who knows her best in South Korea: her platonic roommate Inguk (played by Ha Seong-guk), an ntroveted, aspiring poet who is in his 20s. It’s eventually revealed that Inguk invited unemployed Iris live with him rent-free at his apartment until she could get a job. He was the one who referred her to her French-lesson clients when she decided to make money as a French-language tutor.

Through conversations in the movie, viewers find out that Inguk met Iris randomly in a park, where he saw her playing a recorder musical instrument. (This meeting is shown in a pivotal flashback scene.) Iris wasn’t very good at playing this instrument, but Ingkuk was intrigued by her, and they struck up a conversation. There’s no sexual attracton between Iris and Inguk, but they are clearly charmed by each other.

After they became roommates, Inguk tells Iris: “You are so bright and talented.” Iris later tells Inguk: “No matter what happens, don’t give up your poetry.” Iris is paid in cash (₩200,000, which is about $143 in U.S. dollars in the mid-2020s) for her first day as a French-language tutor. She insists on giving all of the cash to Ingkuk, who has set ₩500,000, or $356 in U.S. dollars, for Iris’ share of the rent.

Inguk is afraid to tell his domineering and overprotective mother (played by Cho Yun-hee, also known as Jo Yoon-hee) about Iris being his roommate. And so, when Inguk’s mother shows up at the apartment for an unannounced visit, some low-stakes hijinks occur that won’t be detailed in this review. It’s enough to say that after Inguk’s mother makes her appearance, it starts to make sense that he emotionally gravitates to Iris, who is the empathetic mother figure whom Inguk doesn’t have with his own mother.

Because “A Traveler’s Needs” doesn’t tell a lot about Iris’ background and just shows her having conversations with people, some viewers might find it hard to connect with this movie. “A Traveler’s Needs” is by no means a masterpiece, but it invites viewers to speculate about what circumstances led Iris to move to Seoul without a job and without knowing anyone. Iris’ unconventional way of teaching already indicates that she is someone who doesn’t want to live a conventional life.

Huppert gives a very intriguing performance as “go with the flow” Iris, while Cho has a likeable screen presence as the shy and socially awkward Inguk. It’s perhaps no coincidence that these two unlikely roommates are the only two characters who have names in the movie. Ultimately, “A Traveler’s Needs” (in its very understated way) shows the impact of finding and appreciating human connections, whether people are living in a country that is familiar or unfamiliar to them.

The Cinema Guild released “A Traveler’s Needs” in select U.S. cinemas on November 22, 2024.

2019 Tribeca Film Festival movie review: ‘House of Hummingbird’

May 5, 2019

by Carla Hay

Jihu Park in “House of Hummingbird” (Photo courtesy of Epiphany Films)

“House of Hummingbird” (“Beol-sae”)

Directed by Bora Kim

Korean with subtitles

North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 27, 2019.

Very few feature films can be praised as accurately depicting the angst of being a 13-year-old girl. Bo Burnham’s 2018 comedy “Eighth Grade” is one of them. Catherine Hardwicke’s 2003 dark drama “Thirteen” is another. And here’s another to add to the list: writer/director Bora Kim’s beautifully made, introspective feature-film debut “House of Hummingbird,” a semi-autobiographical drama set in 1994 Seoul, South Korea. “House of Hummingbird” does not have the social-media-driven humor of “Eighth Grade” or the dangerous, self-destructive behavior of “Thirteen,” but it conveys a similar spirit that shows how feelings of insecurity and social pressures can eat away at a young girl’s confidence. Carried by an admirable performance by Jihu Park, “House of Hummingbird” is a deliberately paced film that builds up to a conclusion that transforms several of the characters in the story.

Being a 13-year-old in eighth grade is a tricky age for a girl. She’s going through puberty, and might be thinking about dating—but, depending on her family and peers, she might be considered too young to date people her age. She’s old enough to go to places without adult supervision, but she’s not old enough to drive. And 13 is an age when most people are preparing themselves for high school, which is the time in many people’s lives where they have to make decisions that impact their futures as adults.

In “House of Hummingbird,” Park portrays Eunhee, a slightly rebellious teen who loves spending time with her friends, going to karaoke bars, and occasionally getting into mischief, such as shoplifting. Her parents own a rice cake shop, and she’s sometimes made to feel socially inferior because of her family’s working-class economic status. At home in their crowded urban apartment, Eunhee is often unhappy. Her older brother Dae-Hoon (played by Son Sang-yeon), who is the favored child because he is a boy, bullies her by secretly hitting her for no good reason. Her stressed-out parents (played by Lee Seung-yeon and Jung In-gi) frequently argue with each other. And her older sister Suhee (played by Bak Su-yeon) is so passive that she tries to make herself invisible and isn’t much of a friend to Eunhee. All of the kids sometimes chip in to work at the family shop, but Eunhee doesn’t like it and thinks she can have a better life for herself. She doesn’t really know yet how she’s going to accomplish that, although she dreams of being a cartoonist.

At the cram school where Eunhee is a student, she finds an intriguing role model in a new teacher named Yong-ji (played Saebyuk Kim), who is more independent-minded than the other female teachers at the school. It’s the kind of school where a teacher will make the students chant that they won’t do karaoke and will go to Seoul University, and students are told to anonymously write down the names of other students who are being delinquent. Yong-ji encourages Eunhee to follow her dreams and to find a way to respect herself, even if the people around her don’t show Eunhee respect. As her admiration for Yong-ji grows, Eunhee finds reasons to spend time with her teacher outside of the classroom. In a letter that Eunhee writes to Yong-ji later in the movie, she asks a question that sums up her teenage feelings of uncertainty: “When will my life shine?”

Meanwhile, Eunhee tentatively gets closer to a male friend named Jiwan (played by Jeong Yun-se), and their innocent flirting turns into hand holding and then awkward experimenting with French kissing. Eunhee keeps her budding romance a secret from her family, since she doesn’t want to get in trouble for being considered too wild. Eunhee and her best friend Jisuk (played by Park Seo-yun ) get caught shoplifting, and they have a disagreement over whether or not to offer an apology to the store owner. Jisuk wants to apologize, but Eunhee does not, and the disagreement ends their friendship. During all of this personal drama, Eunhee finds out that there’s a lump on her upper neck that needs to be removed because it’s near a salivary gland. The operation might leave a scar, and there’s a chance that her face might be paralyzed.

Much of “House of Hummingbird” might be a little too slow-paced for movie audiences who are used to films about teens that have a lot of snappy dialogue and a constant stream of misadventures. “House of Hummingbird” takes a more realistic approach of showing some of the boredom that comes with being a stifled teenager. However, the last 30 minutes of this 138-minute film have a series of unforgettable events where Eunhee has a powerful awakening that she least expects, even if it comes at an emotional cost.

UPDATE: Well Go USA Entertainment will release “House of Hummingbird” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 26, 2020.

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