For an American viewer, the latest film by Korean director Hong Sang-Soo could be called “Culture Clash x Two.”
“Night and Day” is about a 40-year-old Korean artist stranded in Paris for a few months while he waits for a drug charge back home to go away.
Seong-nam Kim was caught smoking a joint with an American tourist but fled the country before charges were filed.
The married man lands in a Paris rooming house populated by Koreans and we follow him as he tries to kill time in between phone calls home to his distraught wife.
The movie has a distinct casual style that makes it impossible to predict what might happen in the next scene. “Night and Day” finds humor in the fish-out-of-water story, but the dominant tone is melancholy displacement.
Hong Sang-Soo brings a fresh eye to Paris, avoiding the postcard monuments in favor of teeming side streets and Asian restaurants where expats gather.
Yeong-ho Kim gives a remarkably natural performance in the central role, 
hiding the character’s feelings in scenes with other people and then erupting in tears when he is alone. We never feel like we’re watching an actor.
The style of the film is so low key and yet so intimate that we aren’t shocked when the husband asks his wife to have phone sex with him one night — the surprise, considering his loneliness and desperation, is that he waited so long.
“Night and Day” has no music score or other melodramatic embellishments and runs almost two-and-a-half hours, so some viewers will find it “slow.” But I enjoyed the realistic pacing and the absence of judgement of the protagonist — I can’t say that I understood the man completely at the end of the movie but I enjoyed the journey Hong Sang-Soo took me on.
“Night and Day” isn’t opening in U.S. art houses this week. Instead it was unveiled Wednesday by IFC Films through cable on-demand services around the country (including Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, Time Warner and Bright House). This is the same innovative U.S. release platform IFC used for two of this year’s best foreign releases, “Gomorra” and “Hunger.”
