"Oh, my face is too big; I want to cut some of it off." "I'm too tall. I wish I could chop my legs short.""How is it all our ugliest girls go to Europe and they're suddenly popular?""I know you think Europeans have bigger cocks than {South Korean} men."To counter these four quotes (my own translations) that stand out in this film (the first two from female characters, the latter pair from men), I'd like to pose a query of my own: why is it American flicks often feature actors in their late twenties playing high school kids, while Asian fare such as WOMAN ON THE BEACH focuses on people behaving (and sort of looking) like middle-schoolers pretending to be grown people with jobs???

It has been said that in America sex is an obsession, while in Europe it is a fact. If the characters in Sang-Soo Hong's Woman on the Beach are representative, it is also an obsession in Korea.In the film, the male lead, film director Jung-Rae Kim, has affairs with two women, Moon-Sook and Sun-Hee, during a spring weekend at a seafront resort. Late in the film, when the two women meet for lunch, they ask each other about their deepest fears. One says it is obsession; for the other it is betrayal. These two themes, embedded within the overriding question of whether life is truly better in the new affluent Korea, dominate the 2 hours and 7 minute version of the movie that was shown at the Philadelphia Film Festival.According to IMDb the American version is only 1 hour and 40 minutes, and indeed, for American tastes, much could have been shortened. For example, the scene in which one of Moon-Sook sees Director Kim with the other woman, Sun-Hee, through the resort's picture window that overlooks the sea. She gets into her car parked beneath the window, starts the engine, and for an interminable minute, we watch the car sitting there with the engine running. Finally she turns off the engine and walks away. Powerful stuff? Well, not for this American moviegoer.Indeed Director Hong beats the viewer over the head with symbolism to make sure no one misses his points. A white dog abandoned by the side of the road represents the betrayal that all the key players show toward one another. A bicyclist left choking on the dust of a passing car is just one reminder that the new Korea is not always better than the old. But when it comes to showing obsessions, Hong outdoes himself. In one scene, Director Kim draws a triangle on a napkin to graphically display the three images of his former wife's affair with a friend that obsess him. Only now he has something new to obsess over, for Moon-Sook admits she had two or three sexual encounters with foreigners when she lived in Germany. Were their dicks bigger than mine, he wonders. New dots on the napkin to obsess over! Ah, he must have new affairs to create new images in his mind so that he can replace the old triangles of obsession with new dots that create a more hopeful shape. Why doesn't he just see a therapist, we ask.Hong is a talented director and the film gives Western audiences a feel for Korean obsessions and angsts. For that it's worth seeing, but after sitting through 127 minutes of beachfront betrayal and recriminations by people who are not really that likable—kind of the Korean equivalent of the self-obsessed New Yorkers in Squid and the Whale, I'm not quite ready to see Hong's earlier works, such as The Day a Pig Fell into the Well.

A film director with writer's block leaves the city of Seoul to finish his script at a Korean seaside resort. An entanglement with two women, however, reveals his inner confusion and forces him to confront his self-defeating behavior. Hong Sang-soo's latest, Woman on the Beach, is a comedy drama about love and the complications that develop in relationships when one partner is less than candid with the other. Like the films of Eric Rohmer, Woman on the Beach is simple on the surface yet explores a deeper layer of complexity in human relationships that is insightful and revealing.As the film opens, director Joong-rae (Kim Seung-woo) travels to Shinduri Beach on Korea's West Coast hoping to renew his inspiration. He brings along his production designer Chang-wook (Kim Tae-woo) and Chang-wook's girl friend Moon-sook (Ko Hyeon-geong), a composer of popular songs. It becomes clear almost immediately that Moon-sook is enamored with the director and the two soon sneak away from Chang-wook and find an empty hotel room where they exchange vows of love. On the surface, she is a strong, independent woman, while Joon-rae gives the appearance of a calm and confident artist, yet both are rebounding from previous relationships and are very vulnerable.When the morning comes, Joong-rae's warm emotions of the previous night have turned chilly. Unable to confront the feelings that reminded him of his failed marriage, he feigns anxiety and asks to be driven back to the city, leaving a phone message for Moon-sook. When he returns to the seaside after a few days, on the pretense of asking for an interview for his film, he meets Sun-hee (Song Seon-mi) who resembles Moon-sook. They spend the afternoon and night together, exchanging vows of affection, similar to those given to Moon-sook.When Moon-sook comes looking for him in a drunken rage, however, he has to confront his deceptions and the tangled web he was woven. Woman on the Beach is a thoroughly engaging film with sparkling dialogue, complex characters, and outstanding performances from the lead actors. If it leaves us with a touch of sadness about people's inability to connect, it also leaves us smiling about their resilience and capacity for joy. Though Hong's characters are flawed, we identify with their weakness because they are all too human and may even reflect our own failings.

Where Hong Sang-soo's dramas differ from Eric Rohmer's, other than all the ways that come with being Korean not French, is notably in the egotism mitigated by irony of having one the main characters in his movies often happen to be a handsome, hunky famous director. In this one it's a "Director Kim," as he's respectfully addressed (Kim Joong-rae, played by Kim Seung-woo) who goes to the somewhat sterile environment of the semi-deserted Shinduri beach resort on Korea's west coast with his production designer, Won Chang-wook (Kim Tae-woo) in hopes of ending a creative block and penning the treatment for his next film. Won brings along a girlfriend, composer Kim Moon-sook (Ko Hyun-joung, a former TV star) and competition gets blatantly going when Director Kim takes Moon-sook aside and frankly says he's interested in her and asks her whether she'd prefer him over the designer, given a free choice.The blatancy of Joong-rae's authority is underlined by his being older, better-looking, physically bigger and stronger-looking, and possessed of a deeper voice. In comparison Won's a mild, slightly nerdy fellow. But despite that, Joong-rae's not an out-and-out winner. He's comically chauvinistic in the way he damns the lady's music with faint praise. And in the time that follows he proves to be neurotic and indecisive, stuffing his hands in his jeans and wiggling around on his legs with comic unease. Moon-sook's dating men when living in Germany he admits is a turn-on for temporary dating, but the opposite for a long-term relationship. He has a serious hangup about mating with a woman who's experienced. Like a good Eric Rohmer character, he hesitates and they discuss. Moon-sook winds up saying that he's wonderful to her as a director, but in other ways just "a typical Korean man." Hong's stories often refer to sex and show couples in bed, but they aren't erotic and characters rarely go all the way. Kim and Moon-sook do however begin with some long kisses on the beach that evening.At another point Director Kim has a violent outburst of anger at a restaurant the trio enters because the owners are half asleep when they come in, and Chang-wook gets equally over-the-top in anger over the injustice of this and insists Kim must apologize. This seems random, except to show that both men have little control over their male egos, and tend to flail about, while the lady remains cool and composed.In spite of all this Moon-sook becomes fascinated with Kim and they spent a night in an empty hotel room, but the next day Kim says it's too quiet for him to work and they all leave Shinduri. Two days later Kim's back on his own though, and leaves a phone message with Moon-sook, regretting his indecisiveness. He "interviews" a woman he runs into who "reminds" him of Moon-sook and takes her up to the same room he was in two nights earlier. Things get complicated when Moon-sook herself reappears and has a drunken emotional outburst outside the room. The new woman eventually feels hurt and abandoned too. In the midst of all this there's a cute dog that gets abandoned by a mysterious couple, and Director Kim pulls an "unused muscle" and is temporarily disabled. Lots of snacking and drinking to a drunken state accompanies all these developments. By himself and with his leg semi-paralyzed Kim somehow turns out the film treatment. The relationships seem unresolved, but Moon-sook is by herself at the end leaving Shinduri again in her little car, which symbolically gets stuck in the sand and then gets out again so she can drive off on her own, free.Woman on the Beach differs from previous Hong films in presenting its few main characters in the relative isolation of this new, somewhat drab resort during a cold spring season. The atmosphere is well used and the scenes are vivid. This film of Hong's is perhaps even more inconclusive than most, and a bit long, but the rhythms of the conversations and the clarity of the blocking and editing arouse one's admiration and this, like all Hong's films, is original and watchable and will not disappoint his fans – which include the selection committee of the Film Society of Lincoln Center: they've been choosing his latest film as one of the NYFF's primary offerings every year for three years in a row. It's also true that Hong's improvisational way of working always results in fluid, convincing performances by his actors.