Here is another deadpan comedy of manners from the prolific Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo: unworldly, gentle and effortlessly minimalist as always, and it is his third film starring Isabelle Huppert. She adds a distinctive level of mystery to this deceptively simple film, conducted (as ever with Hong) at walking pace, with extended and unhurried dialogue scenes, featuring people incautiously drinking alcohol in the middle of the day, in this case Korean makgeolli, a milky rice wine which Huppert’s character coolly declares to be “mild”. There are a couple of Hong’s sudden signature zooms, homing in on things that on the face of it don’t appear to be funny or dramatic. You can spend the entire film wondering if you have properly understood the joke, or if it is a joke (surely the scene in which Huppert plays the recorder very badly is supposed to be funny?). But it is hypnotically watchable.
A modestly dressed French woman called Iris, played by Huppert, is apparently making a living in Korea giving French lessons according to a strange procedure of her own. She conducts long conversations in English with the student, then writes a brief summary in French of the resulting thoughts and ideas and makes her pupil recite this into a tape machine and practise it over and over while she is gone. She does not actually speak French with them.
