Best movie of this year hands down!

I wanted to but couldn't!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I'm liking this movie more and more as I've had a chance to think about the poetry of it. Hong Sang-Soo has done something beautiful and lasting with In Another Country. Of course, having Isabelle Huppert as the star doesn't hurt.Huppert embodies three different women named Ann, in three separate short stories. It all takes place in the sleepy beach town of Mohang. The supporting characters are mostly the same. But the circumstances change, sometimes only slightly. English is mostly spoken. In the first story Ann is a French director staying a couple days with a Korean director friend and his pregnant wife.In the second story Ann (wife of a businessman in Seoul) escapes to the beach town to have a tryst with as well-known Korean director.In the third story Ann is taken to Mohang by her Korean professor woman friend to help her get over her husband leaving her for another woman, a Korean!Other than the back-stories, not a whole lot happens in terms of plot. But the scenes unfold naturally, and with tremendous grace that they are almost painful to watch because the subtleties are just so right on. There's one scene in the final story, when Ann, her professor friend, the man and his pregnant wife are dining alfresco, drinking soju and eating bbq. The man is obviously very curious about this white horse. He sees that Ann can enjoy soju so he pours her more, but neglects the professor friend. And worse than that, he only clinks glasses with Ann. Both the professor and the wife notice this without revealing their ire. The moment is unbearably tense. Hong and Huppert earnestly present three slices of what it means to be a foreigner that you don't need to be Korean, French, or American to feel that weight.

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.

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.

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.