I don’t know why I picked up A Traveler’s Needs (2024). Perhaps to challenge myself to see something different.  

Somehow, it reminded me of Cemetery of Splendour (2015), directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It was one more film I did not understand. Both are art films made by film maestros, literally known as auteurs. This was my first exposure to Hong Sang-soo’s work, and I am unsure if I want to watch more of him.   

Like Weerasethakul, he is a winner of the Cannes Festival and many, many awards. But he does not make his films for the ordinary audience. He makes them specifically for the art critics.. For the regular film buffs, they might be out of grasp and evade the meaning altogether—just as it did for me.  

What Sets It Apart  

The movie stands out on every streaming site hosting Korean films, with a poster featuring a white woman.  Isabelle Huppert, an award-winning French actress herself—plays the central character, Iris. People know her as one of the most powerful actresses of contemporary times. 

The trailer seems more appealing than the film itself. It at least stitches together some random moments, beginning with Huppert playing a flute in the park. But the film is a hard watch.   

But what really sets it apart is its use of cinematography. The film completely rips off the glamorous color tones of images one would expect in a Korean film. Hong shot it like a homemade video. And every now and then, it uses almost amateurish zooming in and out of frames—which The Guardian describes as one of his signatures.  

Perhaps art critics can attribute some interpretations of their own to those scenes. But if there is one word in the dictionary to describe it, it is nonsensical. In fact, if anyone knows how to hold a camera steady in their hands, they could shoot it.  

It is evident that the post-production used the raw footage without applying any sort of color grading or trying to give it a cinematic look. This is precisely what makes the movie intriguing amongst other high-budget Korean films. Hong is known for his ‘micro-budget’ and minimalist, indie-style film adventures. In his case, it meant he completely altered the definition of what cinematic images should look like.   

It is his third collaboration with Huppert, after In Another Country (2012) and Claire’s Camera (2017).  

The Plot (Or the Plotlessness)   

Frankly speaking, the film does not have much to its story. It almost makes the audience feel like it doesn’t have a storyline at all.  

Iris is a French woman teaching French to a couple of students in Seoul. She has just landed the job. The film shows a day in her life, making her first income of $200 and feeling somewhat proud of herself. She stays in a shared home with Inguk, a young Korean man—being much older herself. Ha Seong-guk, an actor without much fanfare who mostly appears in Hong’s films, played the character of Inguk.   

Nearly fifty minutes of its entire one-and-a-half-hour runtime passes uneventfully with the two students. The only noticeable thing is Iris getting too comfortable with her second student’s husband, which some might call ‘getting cheeky’.   

As one reviewer puts it, with both students, it is “exactly the same scene… word for word”, without any change. Both of them played an instrument, with piano given to the first one and guitar to the second. Both reported feeling ‘annoyed’ at themselves because they didn’t play it as perfectly as they might have wanted. Upon hearing that, Iris wrote down the same French sentences on her index card and gave it to them for practice.  

This is all there is to the first fifty minutes, except a reference to a poem by Yoon Dong-ju—who died in a Japanese prison during the Japanese colonial period in Korea. The reviewer noticed at least two walk-outs during a screening and wondered if he too would leave the theater, had it not been for his own ‘no walk-out’ policy.  

The film nowhere shows Inguk as her student, unlike what some reviews suggest. But when his mom arrives, Iris sort of leaves the apartment and goes to probably the same park where he found her. His mom acts overpossessive and wonders why Inguk feels ‘connected’ to Iris without knowing her past and pressures him into inquiring more.   

So far, that is the story. Different reviewers assigned different genres to the film. Some called it a comedy, some a drama—though it lacks any funny moments in the conventional sense or even much dramatic elements.   

Hong could just as well have shot it as a documentary, but he shot it as a feature film. But it seems that is the signature of his style, too.   

The Grand Jury Prize

The film won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. This might make some question why, merely through the weight of big names like Hong and Huppert?  

Much like the rest of the art world, one can make anything they wish in film, too—when their names are blown big and sell it at a mind-boggling price. Just as it happens in painting. If it wasn’t Hong Sang-soo and a random newcomer director instead, would this win this prize?  That remains a question. 

Some critics called it ‘a comedy of elusive human condition’, others too had their own euphemisms. Nevertheless, a lot of heavy lifting was done by the weight of their names—quite undeniably. In the end, you wonder if anyone would have accepted this if a student had made it for a university assignment.    

Well, it is an art film. When that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be this much of a slow burner and a boring watch, the fact that this has walked into the streaming sites does speak volumes on the privilege that comes with having a big name.  

It still retains its own place in the art world and perhaps can serve as a very necessary inspiration for indie art filmmakers, with its evidently very low budget. But one can only hope that the same privilege is afforded to the newcomer filmmakers as well. All indie filmmakers aren’t as well known as Hong, after all. For many, their projects never saw the light of day.  

At the same time, it is also very true that the film itself never said it planned to entertain anyone. It looks like a mystery which dissolves into the air by the fifteen-minute mark at best. The maker meant it for a very niche audience.

And if you aren’t a religiously devoted film watcher who respects the art of filmmaking to the point of never putting down any films, this might not be the right film for you.