Claire’s Camera (2017)
(La caméra de Claire, Hong Sang-soo, France/South Korea 2017, 69 min., DCP, French and Korean w/subtitles)
Rochester Premiere. A refreshingly sunny performance from Isabelle Huppert is at the center of this comic charmer from South Korean master Hong Sang-soo. Huppert plays Claire, a schoolteacher with a (possibly magical) camera on her first visit to Cannes. She happens upon a film sales assistant, Manhee (Kim Minhee), recently laid off after a one-night stand with a film director (Jung Jinyoung). Together, this unlikely pair become detectives of sorts, as they wander around the seaside resort town, working to better understand the circumstances of Manhee’s firing—and developing new outlooks on life in the process. The second of three films prolific Hong Sang-soo directed in 2017, Claire’s Camera has been praised by critics as “one of Hong’s most formally intuitive and sharply written films” (Slant Magazine).