In Another Country
Directed by: Hong Sang-soo
Written by: Hong Sang-soo (screenplay)
Starring: Isabelle Huppert and Yu Jun-Sang

With all the serious, morbid narratives taking root of the festival imagination in places like Cannes, it’s refreshing to see an exceptional movie with a light touch and a very warm sense of humor.  In Another Country, from Korean director Hong Sang-soo, is exactly that.  It is the story of stories, an examination of how a narrative takes form and is altered and rearranged until it is the most effective.

A barely-seen Korean woman dictates these stories into a notepad.  All of them star roughly the same cast of characters, though their roles and importance often change.  Isabelle Huppert plays the main woman in all of them, always a wayward traveler in Korea looking around for a lighthouse and meaning.  There is also the woman she is staying with, an attractive young lifeguard and various other acquaintances along the way.

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