Search The Archive
Isabelle Huppert reunites with director Hong Sang-soo for a charmingly brisk stroll around the town of Cannes.
Man-hee (Kim Min-hee, The Handmaiden, MIFF 2016), a film sales assistant, has accompanied her boss to Cannes but is abruptly fired halfway through the festival. Now unmoored, Man-hee strikes up a friendship with Claire (Isabelle Huppert), a Parisian teacher and photographer who is a first-time visitor to the festival and very delighted with everything she is encountering. By chance, Claire also becomes friendly with both Man-hee’s boss and Korean director So, unaware that all three are connected to each other.
The slight narrative is more than serenely grounded by the combination of Huppert and Kim’s warm performances, and as Claire captures the tangled relationships and emotions surrounding her with each click of her camera, Hong presents an uncomplicated and refreshing meditation on the joy of chance encounters and the power of art in rejuvenating oneself.
'Claire’s Camera pairs off two acting super stars across several charming, awkward, seemingly spontaneously shot conversations. The two actresses are so charismatic that their stilted attempts to connect and communicate in the shared language of English … is something quite surreal, if not magical.' – MUBI Notebook
