In Another Country
2012 · Directed by Hong Sang-soo
Original language: Korean
- drama
The story
A young woman and her mother run away to the seaside town of Mohang to escape their mounting debt. The young woman begins writing a script for a short film in order to calm her nerves: There are three women named Anne, and each woman consecutively visits the seaside town of Mohang. A young woman tends to the small hotel by the Mohang foreshore owned by her parents. A certain lifeguard can be seen restlessly wandering up and down the beach that lies nearby. Each Anne stays at this small hotel, receives some assistance from the owner's daughter, and ventures onto the beach where they meet the lifeguard.
What it’s like
Soft, overcast daylight and muted pastels hold the frame in long, mostly static takes, with the occasional slow zoom that drifts in on a face mid-thought. The off-season seaside town feels empty and faintly chilly: grey sand, a low hotel, a shoreline that stays quiet except for waves and the odd gull. Dialogue carries most of the sound, delivered in plain, unhurried rhythms, with little score beyond a light, sparse piano. The mood is wry, bittersweet and gently absurd, a dry comedy of awkward encounters that repeat and shift like a half-remembered dream. Its pace is deliberate and unforced, and its people are slightly out of step with each other and with their surroundings, slowly finding small moments of warmth. The intensity is low: no violence, no gore, and only mild romantic and sexual suggestion. It suits a rainy afternoon, a quiet evening alone, or anyone who enjoys the deadpan intimacy of observational European cinema and doesn't need a tidy story.
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