A Visitante Francesa

The Korean film Da-reun na-ra-e-seo (2012) was shown in the U. S. with the title In Another Country. It was was written and directed by Hong Sang-soo.

Isabelle Huppert portrays three different women, all of whom are named Anne. The movie (well, movies) are set in a small seaside resort.

The first Anne is a famous French filmmaker visiting an equally famous Korean filmmaker and his pregnant wife. The problem is that the husband is attracted to Huppert.

The second Anne is the wife of a wealthy industrialist. She is here to meet her lover, who is a filmmaker.

The third Anne is a newly-divorced woman who comes to the resort with an older woman friend.

The segments sometimes move in the the same direction. For example, she sets out with a young woman to go shopping, but the next scene always is Anne alone on a barren road.

Anne is always looking for a lighthouse, which is a tourist attraction. Joon-Sang Yoo is a very muscular lifeguard that appears in all the segments. He should know the location of the lighthouse, but he doesn't.

Huppert was born to play these roles. She is one of the great actors of our generation and she is believable as all three women. It's worth watching the movie just to see her act.

Unfortunately, I'm in the minority about this film, because it has an anemic IMDb rating of 6.4. I don't like to recommend movies that have a low IMDb rating, but I definitely will make an exception in this case. I thought it was a wonderful movie, and rated it 9.

Apparently am in the minority here, but this is my 10th Hong Sang-Soo film, and it actually rates in the top 5. As a coherent narrative, it definitely isn't the best. But as an art film that can be experienced that cleverly overlaps 3 stories while incorporating meta fiction elements, ironic repetition, and creatively blurring the line between fact and fiction, "In Another Country" excels. Purposely nonlinear with its storytelling, this is the sorta film one could rewatch to catch the double meanings, hidden messages, and "spot the differences" between the always talented Isabelle Huppert as Anne #A, #B, + #C, in their respective stories. Same name, same actress, different characters? Or are they?

Unwittingly it is my very first film from the universally acclaimed South Korean auteur Sang-soo Hong, by virtue of Isabelle Huppert. But out of my heart, the film is frustratingly bland and ineptly flippant.

All the setting is exclusively in a remote beach and a family hotel near sea side. After an informal conversation between a pair of mother and daughter, Park Soo (Yoon) and Wonju (Jeong), about their familial dispute. Then Wonju starts to write three short stories for her script, each centers a French woman named Anne (Huppert), respectively as a female director, an adulteress and a divorcée (conveniently dressed in blue, red and green), and Wonju becomes the hotelier.

In each scenario, Anne is pursued by Korean men, for the blue Anne, her friend Jongsoo (Hyo) expresses his beyond-friend affection to her despite he is with his pregnant wife Kumhee (Moon); for the red Anne, she is on a tryst with the film director Munsoo (Mun), who is late for their rendezvous, subsequently she has illusions of whether or not Munsoo will ever arrive; for the green Anne, who is accompanied by her friend Park Soo, out of her wedlock because her husband deserts her for a Korean woman, she is seeking help from a monk (Youngoak) but also seduced by the lecherous Jongsoo.

Yet in each episode, Anne encounters an amiable lifeguard (Yu), and looks for a small lighthouse, they almost have the same dialog typically instigated between a foreign tourist and a local citizen, which is pleasant to watch for the first time, but a third time is not a charm. In one hand, one can greatly appreciate the sharp-witted execution of the in-your-face hostility hidden beneath the ostensible amicability thanks to the language barrier, on the other hand, most of the time, the film entraps itself into its own dilemma-tic loop, only skirts along the surface of the inter-cultural clash.

Huppert is criminally underused here, maybe she also took the advantage for a holiday here, the Korean cast is naturalistic at its best, Sang-soo Hong never give anything too demanding to perform, the film is a free-wheeling prose, it might fare better if it is projected as a screen background with its unobtrusive visual tenderness and lilted but minimal conversations while you can sip your afternoon tea with mini-cookies, but, it you want to carefully scrutinize its contents and its subtext with your full attention, it is an embarrassingly dreary one, and it seems Sang-soo Hong himself, did adopt a devil-may-care attitude long since its inception.

Isabelle Huppert is having a great time making movies, taking on any kind of oddity they push at her. It's a bit rough on her fans, who get stuck with items like this and CACTUS but I suppose you take the rough with the smooth.

A Korean girl facing a crisis sets down to write a script in which Huppert appears as "the French Woman." Now you can't complain about mis-casting. Complete with the sound of typing (thank you Twilight Zone) she puts our heroine into three different scenarios set in the so nice timber beach front home, where she encounters the same characters in different arrangements, looking for a light house, losing an umbrella and getting amorously involved with the men. Kind of precious.

The material is presented in sharp, subdued colour with minimal editing. It's not worth it's star's time or the viewer's.

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (dir. Sang-soo Hong) This is a thoroughly enjoyable low budget, Independent Korean film starring French super-star, Isabelle Huppert. The film is presented as a handful of separate vignettes about a French woman (all played by Huppert) who visits a small Korean seaside vacation village. The film advances the theme that innocent or friendly interactions between foreigners can often be misinterpreted as sexual advances. The film has a strange improvisational and almost surreal tone, yet cleverly manages to convey the feelings of strangeness that a woman alone might experience as a foreigner in another country. If you are a fan of Isabelle Huppert, this is a MUST SEE.