Isabelle Huppert has reached that magical point where she gives a thrill of delight simply by showing up, her decades of great performances seeming to hover around her like a halo. Korean director Hong Sang-soo uses that fact to good effect in his latest film, casting Huppert as “the French woman” who figures into three connected stories.
The stories are concocted as a self-distraction by Won-ju (Jung Yoo-mi) — a young woman with money worries who lives at a beachfront bed-and-breakfast. The tales interlace the same elements: an overfriendly, occasionally randy lifeguard (Yoo Jun-sang), a search for a small lighthouse that the locals have barely heard of, umbrellas, a pregnant woman and her (possibly) philandering husband. And Won-ju puts herself in each episode, too, embarking on a shopping trip that never comes to pass.
The conceit is slight, but Hong’s playful structure conceals sharp observations about fantasies, communication, and how foreigners and natives interact.
Through them all weaves Huppert, named Anne in each episode. Huppert’s smallest choices are a delight — the way one Anne’s eyes shift slightly when someone mentions an unwanted kiss, the Shetland-pony way another Anne prances on the beach in heels. If you’re going to conjure an all-purpose fantasy French woman, surely Huppert is a brilliant choice.