Directed by: Hong Sang-soo (홍상수)
Starring: Kim Min-hee (김민희), Isabelle Huppert, Jung Jin-young (정진영), Chang Mi-hee (장미희)
The Film: Claire’s Camera is a continuation of Hong Sang-soo’s signature style of long takes where extended conversations unfold slowly and require both patience and concentration from viewers who wish to uncover subtle meaning. Walks along the beach, casual conversation over coffee, and the signature post-four-bottles-of-consumed-alcohol drunken moments of honesty are all here. This is director Hong’s fourth consecutive collaboration with actress Kim Min-hee that further explores themes of trust, infidelity, and most importantly – artistic expression.
Man-hee (Kim Min-hee) works in the sales department for a film director, and while on a business trip to the Cannes Film Festival, she is fired from her job and told it is for being dishonest. After being fired, Man-hee meets a French school teacher named Claire (Isabelle Huppert) who asks if she can take Man-hee’s picture with her Polaroid camera. Man-hee agrees and the two of them end up spending the rest of the day together in Cannes. Unbeknownst to Min-hee, Claire also has also recently taken pictures of both the director (Jung Jin-young) and boss (Chang Mi-hee) she had been working for.
One can’t help but view Claire’s Camera as yet another work in which director Hong Sang-soo has inserted himself into. The film opens with Man-hee finishing up her work in a small office where viewers who are familiar with Hong’s work will quickly recognize a movie poster for one of director Hong’s previous films on the door. It is also no coincidence that the director whose film Man-hee is promoting, So Wan-soo, bears not only a similar name but shares a striking resemblance in appearance to director Hong. Also, Wan-soo is a Korean filmmaker visiting Cannes where one of his films is showing at the Cannes Film Festival, just as director Hong Sang-soo really was in 2016, exactly when and where Claire’s Camera was filmed. This works in Hong’s favor in making a film rich with multiple layers that those with the appetite for it can discuss near endless interpretations of.
This duality present in Hong’s recent films can be especially interesting if the viewer is familiar with the recent mixing of the director’s public and private life (which you may read more about in my past review of On the Beach at Night Alone, 2017). This results in a film that can be viewed in multiple ways depending on its audience. On one hand, Claire’s Camera is a curious film about strangers connecting and sharing in both culture and the mysteries of life. While at the same time, the film plays off a still lingering public perception in Korea surrounding the auteur filmmaker and his high profile affair with lead actress Kim Min-hee, whose character’s name (Man-hee) is only one vowel different from the actress’s name.
From the perspective of Claire’s Camera being sincere film about the nature in which complete strangers can connect to share in both culture and ideas, the film is quite successful. It’s not everyday you see a film that portrays both the excitement as well as the challenges that go along with meeting someone from a foreign land and trying to make a genuine connection. Claire, a high school music teacher looking to broaden her artistic sensibilities by taking pictures around Cannes, takes the brave first step of introducing herself to the foreigners (both Man-hee and Wan-soo on separate occasions), whom she finds both fascinating and beautiful. After getting over the initial awkwardness upon being approached by a stranger and communicating in one’s non-native language (which is very accurately portrayed), Claire and her newfound friends are able to engage in meaningful dialogue and establish sincere friendships however short-lived they may be.
Unfortunately, Claire’s Camera doesn’t do much else beyond this unique portrayal of character interaction. There are only really two scenes in which characters break from casual dialogue to express rawer emotions, and all happen to take place in scenes without Claire and in Korean dialogue. There are also opportunities in Claire’s Camera to generate more of a magical and mysterious narrative surrounding Claire and the magic she claims her pictures help to capture that are forgone. This could have helped to elevate the film into something truly worth investing in, rather than what ultimately ends up as a fairly boring viewing experience.
One has to give the actors a lot of credit for doing so much of the film in a foreign language, with Kim Min-hee being the standout. Her character Man-hee comes across as quite cute and endearing when speaking in English with Claire, which interestingly contrasts with her portrayal as being dishonest by her boss. Isabelle Huppert did a fine job as well, but there are some odd scenes that felt as if she was expecting director Hong to yell cut, almost like she wasn’t on board with the format at times. Jung Jin-young, playing the director, probably had the most difficult scenes to shoot and really nailed what he was given. Due to the extensive amount of English dialogue though, one is left wanting more since the best scenes are in Korean.
While the characters interacting with Claire make for several pleasing sequences, with a 68 minute run-time, Claire’s Camera seems to be missing a lot. As a whole, it isn’t interesting enough and lacks the magic to be the short slice-of-life art piece it hopes to be, making it one of the director’s weaker films. Having enjoyed much of the director’s previous work, one can only hope that Hong moves past this overly self-infused style of filmmaking if only for the reason that we have seen it all before from him and done better. If you must see everything Hong Sang-soo makes and enjoy over-analyzing the director’s intentions (as I do), Claire’s Camera is fortunately short enough that you can get it out of the way rather quickly. For everyone else though, the time is better spent somewhere else. 5/10 – Very niche, recommended for fans of the director only
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