A Traveler's Needs (2024)
Admittedly, the Huppert competitionist in me got me here and she is worth watching, though she is in the grand scheme of things forgettable in this. I kind of get the central theme going here, with having a situation where most conversations gets forced into simple short sentences due to the language gap. The idea seems to be strip all the pretenses, the large vocabulary, the well thought out clever long sentences, and see what truth can come from stripped to the core simplicity. Having people say out loud their inner thoughts and feelings in an almost childlike blunt manner, is a genuinely interesting concept. But I only the concept as an intellectual exercise in stripped down film technique. Because Sang-soo have also stripped rest of the film language down to bare bones, with every scene shot in the most plain boring way imaginable, in mostly dull settings and often horrendously lit. There is 100% intention behind those choices, not lack of skill, but it made me lose any engagement in the work.
Rating: 2.5