An intriguing little cross-cultural curio that plays like a woozy, jazz-improv riff on romantic futility and destiny, South Korean director Hong Sang-Soo’s In Another Country is a trifling cinematic doff of the cap to French New Wave cinema, but kind of beguiling nonetheless. It’s an arthouse bon-bon all the way, but one that fans of French actress Isabelle Huppert will surely not want to miss.



The movie, which played in competition last year at the Cannes Film Festival, unfolds in three segments. In each, Huppert plays Anne, a French visitor to a small South Korean beach town named Mohang. In the first, though, she’s a filmmaker visiting a colleague (Kwon Hae-Hyo, above right) and his pregnant wife (Moon So-Ri), who is suspicious and jealous of their relationship. In the second, she’s the well-off wife of a traveling businessman who slips away to rekindle an illicit affair with a Korean filmmaker (Moon Sung-Keun) in turn gripped by his own petty covetousness. In the final story, Anne is a lonelier divorcée traveling with her friend (Yoon Yeo-Jeong), a university instructor. Undercurrents of infidelity and spiritual and romantic settledness factor into each segment, as does a kind of goofy lifeguard (Yoo Jun-Sang) with whom Anne repeatedly crosses paths.

Hong is considered one of the more established (and prolific) auteur filmmakers working in South Korea today, and with In Another Country he again delivers an aesthetically bold work, a movie of watchwork-like moving parts in which characters can variously feel three-dimensional and entirely representational. Like many writer-directors, his work often plumbs some of the same themes (neuroses born of relationships) and unfolds in familiar settings (beaches are a favorite). In this regard, In Another Country sometimes feels like a whimsical yet serene repackaging of past material.

Huppert, however, gives the movie — Hong’s first work in predominantly English, though there are Korean portions accompanied by subtitles — a fresh and amusing spin. (A scene of her baying at goats is a left-field delight that keeps on giving.) Hong elicits engaging, naturalistic performances from his actors, and in sketching out these different possible lives of Anne he seems to be making a commentary on the ephemeral nature of romance, while also fetishistically indulging his love of the French New Wave.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, In Another Country comes to DVD presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio tracks. Unfortunately, apart from chapter stops and the movie’s Stateside theatrical release trailer, there are no other supplemental features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; if Half is your thing, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) D+ (Disc)