TURNING THE LENS
WHETHER IT BE TAKEN AS A FRIVOLOUS FILM IN WHICH CINEPHILES IDLE IN ONE OF THE SCREEN’S BELOVED CITIES, OR AS AN EXTRATEXTUALLY RICH WORK THAT LETS ITS CREATOR REFLECT, BY PROXY, ON SOME REAL-WORLD FOIBLES, CLAIRE’S CAMERA REVEALS MUCH ABOUT WRITER/DIRECTOR HONG SANG-SOO AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWERS OF MEMORY AND THE MEMORIALISED IMAGE, WRITES DAVE CREWE.
The choice to have Claire’s Camera (Hong Sang-soo, 2017) open the 2017 Queensland Film Festival seemed entirely appropriate. Opening-night films tend to be lighthearted affairs, screened to accompany hors d’oeuvres and sparkling wine. Running at just under seventy minutes, Hong’s Rohmeresque film of romantic and professional complications intertwining on the outskirts of the Cannes Film Festival fitted the bill perfectly.
The critical response that followed Claire’s Camera’s out-of-competition premiere at (the real-life) Cannes certainly suggests that it’s an easygoing film. Variety described it as a ‘lovable wisp of a character study’; The Film Stage framed it as ‘a decidedly laid-back affair’. The Hollywood Reporter, Slant and Film Comment all chose ‘breezy’ as the adjective du jour (though it’s worth noting that the last of these qualified the descriptor with ‘deceptively’). I don’t mean to quibble with these critics’ characterisation of the film: Claire’s Camera is delightfully refreshing and refreshingly delightful, particularly for viewers neck-deep in the grim social dramas that tend to dominate contemporary film fests. If you want to evoke the experience of idly wandering the sunny streets of Southern France after perhaps a beer (or soju) too many, you could do much worse.
Nonetheless, I’d argue that the film’s lightness belies a deeper, more sophisticated examination of relationships and how we perceive them. In their aforementioned reviews, both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter read the film
