A French Woman

I'm a big fan of Korean cinema, and there was another time-based film from that country, The Lake House, that I liked a lot, so I had high hopes for this one, but it's a real disappointment: the cinematography is poor and cheap-looking, really not much better than a student film, and the story is unclear and hard to follow: a Korean woman who's been living in France begins experiencing some kind of... time slip? Every time she goes to the bathroom? Something like that, anyway.

There's no action to speak of and the great majority of the film it's just the same small bunch of uninteresting people sitting in the same bar talking, apparently at different points in their lives, although this is never made all that clear, through changing the surroundings or their appearances or even the behaviour of the lead actress, who you would have thought would have been a little more unsettled and confused.

I was really hoping for something more along the lines of Back To The Future, Triangle or Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, but this fails dismally at just about everything, being much more mind-based than anything else, with therefore no real-world repercussions for anything that happens in the film. A confusing mess and a waste of time..

Expect random references to Truffaut, scenes of lonely looking people in Paris, overcomplicated camera angles, self-indulgent dialogue, overwrought plot lines. Rooms are dark. Bar scenes are darker. Lights flicker in dingy bathrooms. The husband's named Jules (and yes, there are references to Jules et Jim). There are better ways for directors to use their own life experiences. This one's like peeping into a teenager's diary as she wonders what it'd be like to be a woman of a certain age. A woman of the world! She thinks, and agonizes over her confused identity as she loses herself between Paris and Seoul. How romantic, how exciting.

There's no alterity here. Nothing remotely interesting. It's truly a shame if this is what Korean independent films have to offer.