In Another Country

This is a South Korean film made by Sang-soo Hong, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It consists of three consecutive short films, each starring Isabelle Huppert. There are some similarities between the three stories. All the films are set in a tiny coastal resort and are populated by the same characters, particularly a young life guard and the manageress of the only hotel. In addition each story stars Huppert playing a different role. In one she is a film maker staying in the hotel and planning to make a film, in the next she is the wife of a businessman meeting her Korean lover in the hotel, and in the last she is accompanying a friend who is getting over a divorce.

Each of these stories is light and amusing, but interestingly there are minor incidents which spread across the three stories. A detail may be motivated in one story and resolved in another. For example in the first film the Huppert character is walking on the beach and disapprovingly notices a piece of broken glass, and in the last story she is drunk on the beach and carelessly discards a beer bottle. The young life guard, who lives in a tent behind the beach, is a significant character in each story, usually doing his best to ingratiate himself with the Huppert character, and we may speculate on whether she is appreciating his nice body, and in the last story she yields to the temptation.

So these three separate stories are not quite separate. It is a sort of hybrid. This film is an example of the innovation attributed to Asian cinema and it was well received in the London Film Festival showing when I saw it.