Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Leofwine_draca This isn't a film. Rather, it's a collection of rather uninteresting vignettes, all of them focused around an unpleasantly self-centred middle-aged Frenchwoman who happens to be visiting South Korea. Unfortunately, this means we're back in the world of low-budget filmmaker Hong Sang-Soo, whose previous films THE DAY HE ARRIVES and OKI'S MOVIE I've watched. I didn't like either of them, finding them pretentious, but this is even worse.There's no story here whatsoever, just a trio of three short stories that are almost identical stylistically. Isabelle Huppert's protagonist is one of the most uninspiring I've seen in film, a woman who wanders around looking for self-gratification, boozing and smoking all the while. It becomes tiring after about five minutes. The characters she meets are equally self-absorbed, although the twist is that as she's foreign we have to put up with a ton of poorly-spoken English dialogue instead of the usual Korean language. Inevitably the shadows of sex, adultery, and alcoholism raise their head, but it's all so, well, pointless, I can't believe they bothered to make it.

lchadbou-326-26592 A group of us in San Francisco who call ourselves Cinema Snobs watch a hopefully unusual movie monthly on video, and yesterday's showing of In Another Country was one of our best. Some of us had also seen a half dozen or so of Hong Sang Soo's earlier works when they were presented in 2007 at the Asian American Film Festival.The obvious point to be made, after seeing even just one of his,is that they work on little variations of elements that are repeated from movie to movie and also within the separate parts of each movie. Sometimes just the slightest variation can offer the appreciative viewer a thrill of excitement at the change. The downside, as in some of his more recent efforts, is that the repetition can become annoying.I also found his earlier ones had a greater visual richness: a sense of color, composition and depth of field that the later ones seemed to eschew in favor of erratic zooming, use of digital instead of celluloid, and even a misguided attempt (in The Day He Arrives) at fake black and white, So it is good that Hong at least with this one seems to have returned to shooting on film and to some of his more graceful early work. It is also a welcome addition to the mix to include a foreign character (Huppert) with the various misunderstandings that can come from people, who are already having trouble communicating, not being able to understand each others' languages. I recommend In Another Country for those who have never seen a Hong Sang Soo as an enjoyable introduction.

jackshrack The film, while showing promise and alluding to something more than appears on the surface, was quite monotonous to me. I have to say that the acting and direction seemed at times quite amateur. It left me with a feeling of dissatisfaction. As someone said the director is interested in a minimalistic approach to conveying a story and I imagine that he succeeded. It felt more like a rough sketch than a film. In fact it felt to me like 3 short films. Nevertheless, there was something intangible in the characters, something allusive. Again the minimalism lends itself to an ambiguity. Personally, I like ambiguity to a degree but this film was more like a line drawing than a painting. The opening in fact sets the tone for the film. The music that the director chooses, the credits and the acting all give you that feeling that you are not watching real human beings fleshed out but character studies.

eraserdead After being impressed with all of the works I've seen from Korean director Sang-Soo Hong I am sad to say that this disappointed me. As much as I appreciate his minimalistic approach to filmmaking I think that, after seeing the same techniques used in four consecutive films, his style is waning on me. Despite that, I did enjoy the plot and it's always interesting to see how Hong approaches filmmaker characters – in this case a female. An impressive performance from Isabelle Huppert too who seems to be doing just about anything she's given.Hong displays the same themes as he always does: relationships, infidelity and alcoholism – and there are no qualms from me in terms of his improvisational skills when it comes to screenplays. In typical style for the filmmaker he repeats scenes, dialogue, characters and locations but this time there is a plot point that elevates the repetition – in actuality this is a film about a film and we see the scenes acted out as the female filmmaker character puts her self into her work.Overall it is a good film but, as I mentioned before, I was disappointed simply because his techniques are beginning to become a little tiresome.