With A Traveler’s Needs, Hong Sang-soo once again proves that his cinema, no matter how familiar it may seem, never stops transforming. The film, which marks his third collaboration with Isabelle Huppert, is perhaps his lightest and most charming comedy in years—but that doesn’t make it any less complex or unsettling. Beneath an almost improvised appearance, Hong crafts a subtle meditation on communication, learning, and foreignness.

Huppert plays Iris, a French woman who wanders aimlessly through Seoul. We know little about her—neither her past nor her motives are ever revealed. We watch her playing the recorder in public parks, drinking makgeolli alone, or listening quietly to her students as they perform music. To make a living, she teaches French, although her lessons are far from traditional. They resemble loose conversations—sometimes in English, sometimes through gestures or silence—that end up becoming self-discovery experiences for her students.

Curiously, the French language itself is almost absent from these lessons. Iris prefers to transcribe what her students feel or say into French and record it on tape for them to repeat, as if that echo of their own emotions could somehow facilitate understanding. Grammar doesn’t matter; what matters is feeling. One of the most revealing moments comes when Iris and one of her students visit a commemorative rock with the name of the student’s late father engraved on it. The scene’s contained emotion transforms into a sort of lesson, where emotional experience becomes a source of knowledge. Through these small rituals, Iris creates a space where learning and intimacy blend in unexpected ways.

Much of the film unfolds through conversations that border on the absurd, awkward silences, and mildly ridiculous situations that flirt with slapstick. As usual, Hong films with a fixed camera and minimal cuts, making the audience feel like part of these exchanges, which proceed at their own unique rhythm. In one scene, for instance, Iris touches a student’s husband’s arm with too much familiarity, provoking an ambiguous reaction that never quite resolves. Was it an innocent gesture? A misunderstanding? Hong allows the moment to rest in its own ambiguity.

As the film progresses, we meet In-guk, the young man with whom Iris shares an apartment. There’s a certain emotional tension between them that might be romantic—or perhaps just a form of closeness born out of necessity. When In-guk’s mother unexpectedly arrives, a new line of conflict opens: she doesn’t trust Iris and questions her presence. But, as with everyone in the film, what’s said and what’s meant rarely fully align.

A Traveler’s Needs moves like its protagonist: aimlessly, yet with an internal emotional logic that slowly reveals itself. In his signature style, Hong builds subtle repetitions—scenes that echo previous ones, characters facing similar dilemmas in different keys. Within this play of mirrors, the Korean filmmaker finds space for a profound reflection on the limits of language, and how, sometimes, knowing someone doesn’t mean fully understanding them.

Isabelle Huppert, for her part, gracefully embraces this game of miscommunication. Her Iris is disorienting, affectionate, sometimes exasperating, but always fascinating. The actress brings to this role a kind of humor unlike that in her better-known performances: a tender, melancholic, and slightly awkward humor.

Ultimately, A Traveler’s Needs is a delicate comedy that gently and oddly questions what it means to connect with another human being in a language that isn’t one’s own—or even without any language at all. With his increasingly distilled cinema, Hong Sang-soo shows that at the edges of language, we might find a purer form of expression—and perhaps, of communion.