This story is very similar to Hong Sang-soo's previous work "Direction to North Village". In "Direction to North Village", a man encounters multiple women with the "same" face. Each woman has a different personality, but the ending is similar. The men leave in the end. In this film, Huppert, the woman with the "same" face, was placed in the same environment three times, but the character and story of Hubert who appeared each time were adjusted. There are only minor differences in the ending. The first story of Huppert and the lifeguard: The French female director fell in love with the lifeguard, did not have sex, and left a letter before leaving. The second story: The girl was waiting for her lover, and in her boredom, she fantasized about a little story in which her lover quarreled with her because she was jealous of the lifeguard. The third story: An abandoned young woman makes love with a lifeguard she meets in depression. Huppert is sexually repressed in all three stories. About the lighthouse that can never be found, every time Huppert is told that there is a lighthouse here, it is the girl landlord who is the same actor as the female screenwriter, and every time Huppert asks the object of questioning is the lifeguard. (This structural setting is really the most exciting part of the film) That is, the author wants to find the lack in reality through his works, which can never be found. The author of these three short stories is the female screenwriter at the beginning of the film. In that boring afternoon, she longed for sex and could not get it. Finally, she relieved her desire by writing three short stories about sexual repression, but it could not really replace her desire. So this is a film about the creator, from the creative motivation to the screenwriting skills, everything is deconstructed by Hong Sang-soo. "In a foreign country" is a metaphor that describes the relationship between creation and reality.
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