A successful painter facing marijuana possession charges flees his Korean home for the streets of Paris in filmmaker Hong Sangsoo’s ambling portrait of midlife male discombobulation. A run-in with an old flame, now unhappily married; a series of tearful phone calls to his wife back home; a cautious affair with a young art student; a visit to a church; brief stirrings of lust and affection and homesickness and regret—Hong captures it all with effortless grace and calm matter-of-factness, until a late-film swerve into fantasy caps the whole thing off with a mischievous question mark. (2008, English, French, and Korean with English subtitles, 144 minutes)
This film is part of our Tales of Cinema: The World of Hong Sangsoo series.