A cinematic triptych with Isabelle Huppert in the triple lead role. An entertaining film addressing the Korean attitude towards foreigners, as well as the Korean behaviour towards one another when in the company of foreigners.
A young film student and her mother run away to the seaside town of Mohang to escape their mounting debt. The aspiring director begins writing a script for a short film in order to calm her nerves. Three women named Anne appear, and each woman consecutively visits the seaside town of Mohang. The first Anne is a successful film director. The second Anne is a married woman secretly having an affair with a Korean man. The third Anne is a divorcée whose husband left her for a Korean woman. A student tends to the small hotel by the Mohang foreshore owned by her parents. A certain lifeguard can always be seen 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.
»I play three parts and through these three little stories we see a woman's whole emotional life – desire, expectation, loneliness, love, disappointment. It looks a simple film but it's really about a lot of things. I know it looks free and easy, but it wasn't improvised at all. Hong Sang-soo writes his dialogue every night and gives you the script every morning and you shoot it. The film looks spontaneous but it's very precise actually.« (Isabelle Huppert)
Hong Sang-soo
Born in 1960 in Seoul, South Korea. Initially studying film direction at the Chung-Ang University, he then graduated in filmmaking from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, USA. Returning to Korea, he worked for television, later on dedicating himself to filmmaking. He also taught at the Korea National University of Arts.