<em>Claire's Camera</em> and the Beguiling Films of Hong Sang-soo
The increasingly prolific Korean auteur has a new movie starring Isabelle Huppert that’s emblematic of his charms.
The eponymous character of , played with unusual guilelessness by Isabelle Huppert, wanders from scene to scene like a motivational sprite, striking up conversations with strangers on a whim. As the film’s title suggests, Claire has a Polaroid camera with her, and she has the friendliness of a tourist, which she is—a Parisian on vacation, she’s accompanying a friend who has a movie at the Cannes Film Festival. But Claire also operates as a strange sort of metaphysical force: Throughout the film, she separately runs into and chats with three different peoplewho are embroiled
