Here

In director Braden King's Here, Ben Foster stars as Will Shepard, a California cartographer working for an American satellite company on a job in Armenia. Staying at the same Ashtarak hotel, Will meets photographer Gadarine (Lubna Azabal), who helps him out with the language—although both are recent strangers in a strange land, as she has just returned from Paris. Gadarine's soldier brother, Krikor (Narek Nersisyan), calls her "the prodigal daughter” and would prefer to see her doing something more traditional or practical, but Will says he admires her work. When she finds out he's planning a trip to disputed territory, she volunteers to go with him, and things take a turn for the romantic when they wind up swimming in a hot spring. Here follows the pair over the next few days—spending the night with a childhood friend, visiting her working class family, undergoing a tense encounter with border guards, falling out over a confrontation with a flock of sheep, and later reconciling. While Will values his work, he also comes to appreciate the independent-minded Gadarine, although—in the end—he will have to choose one over the other. Along the way, King inserts experimental interludes (created by four other filmmakers) and poetic recitations by Peter Coyote. If these fragments don't add much to the narrative, they nevertheless make for a pleasant diversion on this amiable road trip. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)