A Traveler's Needs (Yeohaengjaui pilyo)
Cinema great Isabelle Huppert might be best known for her dramatic roles, but she is in fact the queen of comedic timing and screen awkwardness.
In A Traveler’s Needs, she plays a woman who appears out of nowhere in a Korean park, toying with a child’s recorder on a bench. Nobody knows who she is. She says she is from France. With no money or means of supporting herself, she has been advised to teach French. This is how she comes to have two Korean women as her pupils. The French woman likes to walk barefoot and to lie down on rocks. And when she is feeling up to it, she tries to see each instant in a non-verbal way and to live life as rationally as she can. But things remain as hard as ever, so she relies on the Korean alcoholic drink of makgeolli to bring a bit of comfort to her days.
One of Hong Sang Soo’s most ostensibly funny films, it won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Berlinale.