As Aventuras de uma Francesa na Coréia

This has to be the worst film I've seen in a long time. Story line looks and sounds like day one improvisation at a high school drama club. A long zoom into a dog has to be the Director mocking anyone who has been foolish enough to have spent their hard cash and time on this film. The actors must have wondered what the hell was going on, whilst making this awful drama. The colour and contrast was flat, don't know if this was a deliberate attempt to make this film even more boring. How this was ever financed I don't know. I would be embarrassed to put my name to this farce. Don't waste your time.

Super typical Hong Sang-soo storyline. But this time, Director Hong turned the means into ends, and returned to the alienation and closeness between people. There are many factors, and language became a more core means to process and apply.

Huppert's appearance adds a layer of depiction of strangers to the film in addition to the discussion of people themselves, acting as a cultural intruder. Whether communication problems caused by language barriers can effectively reveal people's identity. Repetition and variation are Hong Sang-soo's tricks, but they are also our lives.

From this development, Director Hong still likes to express his feelings directly. Discuss this inevitable struggle for subjectivity. Director Hong's little humor still works, just take a look and watch it.

A dull movie with flat characters in which nothing relevant happens. A wasted opportunity to showcase the relationship between a foreigner and Korean culture. The script seems to have been virtually non existent during filming (if there was any script at all).

There was no way of connecting with the story or any of the characters, as they were all incredibly lifeless. An awkward nonsense.

In short, dialogue is nonsensical, camerawork is amateur at best, actors don't bother making any effort whatsoever. Don't waste your time watching this crap because it's over an hour of your life that you won't get back.

Iris is French but she is staying in Korea for the time being, we have no clue why she ended up here but we know she needs to make ends meet so she is being creative and starts to teach French using her unique "method".

The film is very down-to-earth yet very poetic and curiously revolves around language and communication. And miscommunication sometimes. Or refusal to communicate or listen. Also, it is about the social and interpersonal distance between people who know each other and who don't and how this "accepted" distance can change or vary depending on various factors like cultural norms, the place of the conversation, the mood, etc. The storyline is simple, but what we're more interested in is the nuances. We're not interested to know what will HAPPEN to Iris or the other characters but how they will react at a certain point of the conversation, what they will feel and say and how they will do it. Additionally, the character of Iris is truly interesting and some little bits of her true self are gradually revealed but there is a lot left for us to think out. Very subtle, authentic and elaborate work while being simple at the same time.

As usual, Hong Sang-soo provides a typical simple, dialogue-filled, and character exploration narrative on the concept of closeness within individuals, alienation, and conversations. Sang-soo always provide some art-house dramatic works that resembles the work for Eric Rohmer's in the modern generation and is filled with likable characters, solid performances, and dialogue that are most of the time, feeling of the lessons from a poetic novel or realistic conversations.

With the simple production, writing and direction, Sang-soo does drift away from some of the focus within the narrative but as a whole, it stands out as another solid work from Hong.