Although Hong Sang-soo’s manners comedies aren’t expected to make you laugh, they’re still packed with fun, however, it appears that he prefers a whimsical smile much more. In his new Korean feature film, with Huppert on the cast he directed Another provocation to act as a genteel minimalist Masochist, placing a camera onto a tripod and just allowing people to speak while he zooms in or pans around as required, we get a slice of life shot through a wide variety of angles and close-ups. In Seoul, Huppert always finds herself out of place, she is an enigma for local Koreans crossing her paths. There is an endless array of mystique surrounding her, and working alongside, Hong finds their latest film, “A Traveler’s Needs” in Spain.
While the three roles that Huppert took on in “In Another Country” were of a narrow-minded tourist and helpful friend in “Claire’s Camera” who assists a woman in need, this film shows Iris as the most confounding piece dealing with the whole dynamic. At the very outset, she is shown as being a French tutor to a young pianist called Yunhee Cho but goes about it in an obscure way. For instance, she uses a method that involves no books and even joint speaking, the only thing she does is rote learn conversations that they had in English and translate them into French recordings for their students to repeat. This is a peculiar style of teaching and even one of her students, Lee Hye-young, calls her out on it. But when Iris says, ‘I have no ulterior motive, Oh, my god, improvisation has been an asset. It has been my life!’, one gets the impression she is making this up. We can safely conclude that this was merely an ad-hoc part of her strategy since she was rooming with a woman in her 20s in a more rural part of Seoul and needed to earn some cash to stay afloat.
However, her students might not even need to learn French as they still emerge from her classes feeling motivated and exhilarated. Hong appears to be influenced by the mundanity of life where places and events appear over and over again but in different configurations. Consequently, if Iris is teaching someone IRIS P 4 she adopts the same method. She lets them play an instrument, either a guitar or a piano, and then she asks them what they felt while playing it. Until some aspect of the conversation is opened up, her questions in a way become increasingly more probing, and at some point, she develops a kind of platonic familiarity with them.
Hong exhibits trademark patience with arranged scenes in static shots and simple camerawork, making us mere observers of long, mundane dialogues. Huppert, meanwhile, never willingly abandons the facade making us analyze her gleeful smirks and shifts of her shoulders to decipher her actual persona. When she embraces her flatmate bawling “Thanks for being my mate!” does she really mean that? Is the greater thing concealed within her?
To be sure, it is still Isabelle Huppert, who is wearing a grey cardigan and a straw hat but is still radiant. Huppert’s performance is well attuned to the unassuming tone of her colleagues, almost whispering her lines. This is a curious decision, one that seems to gently indicate to us that the lady may be more sinister than she appears. Perhaps she is sincere, or perhaps she is fraudulent. But her reasons could not be more basic: the usual requirements of a passenger – a roof, friendship, and direction. This is because she is not so much about explaining the French language as she is about helping people, through anything so basic as talking, to relieve themselves of their greatest desires and fears.
(She is unable to say why she is always embarrassed by her response to the pianist when she is asked if she loves it: she loves it, she always loves what she does.)
But nestled between every gentle brawling of the furry friend and simple B-roll of koi ponds are these simple moments. These are tiny beloved encounters, sketches of human touch and contact served alongside a kind of femme capricious to unsuspecting students, passers-by and friends. She appears to be almost a ghost, in that she possesses no inner world, save for the consequences of her actions or their consequences. But this appears to be the appeal of Hong’s movie; she alters the existing order of things without causing any upheaval, but by revealing. Afterward, her face is seen in an extreme close-up, one that shatters the otherwise static use of waist-up shots that serve as many of the trademarks in Hong’s work. This is one of the most visually straightforward films filled with close-up feelings of dead silence.
Huppert has been able to effortlessly characterize the essence of “A Traveler’s Needs” as an amalgam of various elements and features fused together while still retaining a deeply rooted meaning to it deep and intricate sense. The pacing of the song is in line with the tempo of typical modern song, however, it is completely out of place with the beats and the tone we are accustomed to. One of the sweeter moments of the film includes witnessing an individual poorly sing a more of a child-like tune or playing the piano for someone. Subtitled films have remained in a distinct niche and people have relatively divided opinions regarding them, the energy they exude however goes unquestioned. Huppert might just be the last film personality able to harmonize modern cinema and relatability. Yes, Hong films do tend to set their own unique tone different from the mainstream, it’s easy to get lost in that drowsiness, maybe even use that as an advantage during certain scenes of the movie.
For Hong’s works, however, conversations have been adapted into verbal combats and the words exchanged during these skirmishes act as weapons to attack the deepest fears of the individuals involved. “Traveler’s” is likewise another piece set in the middle of a battle.
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