Film: "Claire's Camera"
Shot on the fly during the Cannes Film Festival, Hong Sang-soo’s sunny charmer starring Isabelle Huppert explores the power of images to transport us.
The increasingly prolific Hong Sang-soo’s 20th feature—one of his three films to premiere in 2017—was shot on the fly during the Cannes Film Festival. Set far from the festival’s red-carpet pomp, this sunny charmer is a cautionary tale about mixing business with pleasure, in its way no less philosophical than other recent Hong works.
A sales agent (Kim Min-hee) is fired mid-festival for her “dishonesty”—which turns out to be code for sleeping with a director who’s also involved with her boss. The revelations emerge with the help of a French tourist named Claire (Isabelle Huppert), a detective of sorts who helps others see their situations more clearly. Kim and Huppert make for a delightful pair amid the kind of cross-cultural comedy that also defined Hong’s In Another Country, which likewise featured Huppert.
