Review of A Traveler’s Needs / 여행자의 필요, directed by Hong Sang-soo

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I remember when I reached around the one hundred mark I was getting discouraged and decided I needed a few days for a brain break. I took a step back then and thought long and hard about what I wanted to do, and realized I was in the financial privilege at that moment when I could just watch a few movies a couple of days in a row.

While I had to be picky and limited about what kind of streaming platforms I had to have at a time, there was a godsend when it came to streaming. My local library system gives us the opportunity to access Kanopy for free, and they give us a set amount of tickets per month to watch movies and shows on there.

Kanopy typically has all of the Criterion movies I want to watch show up on the platform eventually, and it also has an excellent selection of world and international cinema. Those are the two bases I need covered often, so I try to use as many of the free tickets as I can before they reset at the end of the month.

Hong Sang-soo’s movies are all on there, and I’ve been making a point to sit and watch them when I get the chance. When I worked as a film critic I’d go to the film festivals and always saw one Hong film per year, so it seems fitting to go through all of his filmography now after I quit that job.

Today’s post is A Traveler’s Needs, which is a movie I found unexpected in many different ways. Let’s get into the review before I ramble too much!

A French tourist to Korea meanders throughout her days, sharing poetry, makgeolli, and moments with locals.

Like many Hong Sang-soo movies, this is a film that dawdles. We learn that our main character is a woman who came from France, but largely remains unnamed throughout the course of the movie. How or why she came to Korea is also a bit of a mystery, which her making little comments here and there that might be implications as to why she’s here.

We do know this: she has some financial problems, and if you want to find her when she disappears, she can be found with a recorder in the park and looking at the Korean poems inscribed on rocks and walls, even if she can’t read or understand them.

But throughout the course of the movie, she has interactions with a wide cast of characters. To earn some money here and there, she serves as a French teacher, and in this film we see her tutoring two women specifically on the nuances of the French language and its spoken form.

These interactions between the woman and Koreans blurs borders and languages, as we’re using French, English, and Korean, with most of the characters not being fluent or adept in a second language. A key part of this movie for me was about how language and communication, especially when it comes to cross-cultural encounters, are incredibly difficult.

Here we have this woman who does not fit the conventions of Korean society, but she’s actively interacting with people within it. Her life is actually quite lonely in this foreign country, even if she’s surrounded by strangers, kind or not, and she’s able to get a small stream of income coming her way.

She even manages to find a place living with a Korean guy, which becomes more complicated when his mother visits him and realizes he has an older foreigner living inside his home. The woman has to listen as his mother argues about it, even if she does not fully understand what exactly they’re talking about.

Something that also made me feel really seen is that the woman also has a penchant for going to get makgeolli and just drinking with people outside, or at a restaurant with a cozy bowl of bibimbap. While her actions might be seen as eccentric, and people might see this as an average lifestyle at all, those around her seemed to be charmed by her behavior, even if it is a bit concerning at times.

Overall Thoughts

I find Hong Sang-soo movies can be hit or miss depending on the subject and who’s in them, as he’s a director who tries to replicate life closely and makes it as repetitive as possible. Sometimes it works, other times, if you’re not invested, it becomes really boring.

I think I connected to this movie a lot because I’ve been the foreigner in Korea. I’ve been the person drinking makgeolli with my Korean language partner, barely understanding what goes on, at a beach in Busan, or trying to figure out what a poem means on a wall for the sake of my artistic sanity.

I’ve never had to work in Korea, at least, and make money, but I can really relate to the misunderstandings and lack of communication going on. It’s also really lonely to be by yourself in a foreign country, especially when you don’t speak the language.

This film passed like a blur, and I think I’m going to watch it again in the near future. I say if you’re interested in it, definitely go and give it a chance if you can find it on a platform. It’s worth watching if it sounds like something that fits within your taste.

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