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written and directed by Kim Hee-jung
by Walter Chaw Kim Hee-jung's A French Woman seems curiously of a piece with other recent films about dislocation and loss, such as Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night for one, Claire Denis's Let the Sunshine In for another–works at times suffocatingly pretentious but each possessed of pockets of real beauty and the occasional insight. Denis's film works the best of these, largely for the invisibility of its direction. Calling attention to oneself as a director is a high concept that can work sometimes; more often, it's a tactic that neuters emotional involvement, turning the film into an intellectual exercise and a trainspotting diversion. A French Woman follows Mira (Kim Hojung) on the worst night of her life, as she learns in the middle of a crowded Parisian restaurant that her husband's been unfaithful. She leaves to compose herself and suddenly finds herself transported back to a day some twenty years in the past when she first left Korea to pursue life and love in Paris.
A film about crossroads, then, A French Woman is more a reverie about things that could have been, aligning itself in this way with something Kieslowski might have done (and did do after a fashion with The Double Life of Veronique). Mira, it seems, used to be involved in the arts, and her old buddies whom she left behind are still playing out their slotted roles as prototypical narcissistic creative types. Was it a mistake to chase a life for the sake of security? This is Kim's fourth feature. Her previous film, Snow Paths, had similar questions about, well, paths, especially the ones people choose over others during the long journeys of their lives. A French Woman even reaches similar conclusions about the preferability of winding paths: you may twist through bramble at times but they can also lead to secret places and tranquil clearings. I think Robert Frost talks about this sort of thing, too. The problem with A French Woman is that if one must approach something so well-trod, it needs to be special just to distinguish itself. As it is, we get it almost immediately, and so the rest is time spent wishing we'd chosen a different conversation to have.
