Starring Isabelle Huppert (in her third collaboration with the director), Lee Hyeyoung, Kwon Haehyo, Cho Yunhee, Ha Seongguk — This film follows a French woman in South Korea whose behaviour is not entirely easy for those around her to understand. Dedicated to the alcoholic drink makgeolli and entertained by playing a recorder for children, she ends up discovering a special talent for teaching a little of her language through poetry.
Iris (Isabelle Huppert) earns a little money teaching French, but she is not exactly a teacher like the others. Iris needs no manual and seems to echo Hong Sangsoo and his work-in-progress writing. Iris’s classes never feel like classes: is she the friendly bad guy from a dirty comedy or a mysterious sage who delves into her students’ hidden feelings? Probably a little of both and it makes for a solid comedy engine. “What do you really feel inside? » asks Iris insistently. This is a question that could be asked of practically every character in Hong Sangsoo. These same characters who may wonder, as Iris suggests, “Who is this person inside me?”.
We found in A Traveller’s Needs the difficulty in saying and articulating what we feel, what we really feel – with or without a foreign language barrier. Like inconsequential small talk, everyone starts saying the same thing, without thinking, in a way that is at once absurd, funny and moving. A social embarrassment, in this film where even the kisses are strange. What language do the characters in Hong Sangsoo have in common? Certainly poetry, written on the walls, a coded and precious language that we must not abandon, heard even in a foreign language that we do not understand. (Mickael Gaspar)
