Speaking in another language makes you a different person, especially, I've noticed, if you happen to be a non-native fluent in Japanese. The mild-mannered Aussie transforms into a slangy tough-guy, rolling his r's and living in his own mental version of a yakuza movie. And the frank-talking American who transforms into a master of self-deprecatory, reflexively apologetic keigo (polite language) and wins the "more Japanese than the Japanese" award in her Tokyo suburb year after year.
So what to make of Korean director Hong Sang-soo's romantic drama "Jiyugaoka De (Hill of Freedom)," which stars the bilingual Ryo Kase as Mori, an unemployed Japanese man searching for his long-lost Korean lover in Seoul? Mori and his Korean acquaintances speak English to each other almost exclusively, with varying degrees of fluency and a refreshing lack of self-consciousness.
Unreal? Perhaps less so than the Korean characters in Japanese films who rattle away in grammatically flawless Nihongo immediately after stepping off the plane at Narita. Charming? Certainly, since Mori is guilelessly forthright about his thoughts and feelings in ways that might get him labeled rude or worse in his native land, but, in his slightly fractured English, sound winningly heartfelt, even when he is being downright blunt. And Kase, who has proven himself one of the best international Japanese actors of his generation in films such as Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" (2006) and Abbas Kiarostami's "Like Someone in Love" (2012), gives nuanced readings to the baldest of lines.