Claire’s Camera – La camera de Claire (2017)

Directed by: Hong Sang-soo | 69 minutes | drama | Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Kim Min-hee, Chang Mi-hee, Jung Jin-young, Heesun Yoon, Lee Wanmin, Kang Taewoo, Shahira Fahmy, Mark Peranson

After the charming ‘In Another Country’ (2012), a renewed collaboration with Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo and French actress Isabelle Huppert is hardly a surprise. ‘Claire’s Camera’ was filmed during the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, when Isabelle Huppert was there for ‘Elle’ and Kim Minhee for ‘The Handmaiden’. Although it seems that ‘Claire’s Camera’ came about by chance, the film is very well put together, but the spontaneity remains unmistakably evident in every scene.

Hong Sang-soo slowly reveals the story of ‘Claire’s Camera’. Initially, we see a beautiful young Korean woman, Manhee (Kim Min-hee), who is invited by her boss for a cup of coffee. It is not immediately clear in which industry these people work and where it all takes place; although the movie poster on the door betrays that, as is often the case with characters in Korean films, they are professionals from the film industry. Claire (Isabelle Huppert) meets a film director Wansoo So and not much later it turns out she also knows Manhee. Then it is now also known where the events are taking place, but the order in which this is made known to the viewer means that it is still a bit of a puzzle.

‘Claire’s Camera’ is about art, chance encounters and awkward conversations and situations. The film focuses on the inability (or is it unwillingness?) of people to communicate and the blunt way men think about women’s choices. The fact that most of the conversations are in English, while none of the cast is overly good at that language, adds humorously to that.

Isabelle Huppert plays a French music teacher who is in Cannes for the film premiere of a friend (who is only briefly in the picture at the beginning). Her encounters with Manhee and Wansoo, as well as Manhee’s boss Yanghye, have bigger consequences than she thinks, although you sometimes have the idea that she is stupid and is very aware of the effect her actions have. That is an interesting field of tension and it makes the film very subtly comical. In any case, Huppert’s Claire is a layered character, who spontaneously takes pictures, but gives them a deeper and fascinating meaning. Kim Minhee is also very good and knows how to say much more with refined facial expressions and her body language than with words.

Highly efficient at 69 minutes, ‘Claire’s Camera’ is light-hearted entertainment with a touch of magical realism and a deeper message for those who want to hear it and think about it: what does art have to do with destiny? Do not miss this if you are a lover of Hong Sang-soo, Kim Min-hee and Isabelle Huppert.