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‘Claire’s Camera’ is picture of classic comedic love

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Chicago Tribune

“Strange” is a word that pops up frequently in “Claire’s Camera,” a lovely doodle and the latest from South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo. The strangeness extends to and suffuses most of the human interactions, which never go entirely smoothly.

Let’s take one example of a delectably awkward meeting of strangers attending the Cannes Film Festival, where “Claire’s Camera” was shot. Parisian schoolteacher Claire, played by Isabelle Huppert, is seated at an outdoor cafe a few feet from So Wan-soo (Jung Jin-young), whose film is playing in the festival. His romantic life has become a whiny, alcohol-fueled mess, and we know this, but Claire does not.

They strike up a conversation. The director asks if he might join her at her table. She says yes. And then — nothing. Bashful smiles. Silence. Claire Googles the director, wordlessly. He says, yes, that’s me, all right.

Shot in long, unbroken takes, “Claire’s Camera” sits with such moments, letting the actors luxuriate in the challenge of difficult social encounters. Hong plays guessing games with the audience while toying with the scene order. Often we see what happens, and then jump back to an earlier scene, then forward again. Opening Friday in a week’s run at the Gene Siskel Film Center, it’s compact, cleverly plotted and calmly beguiling.

The first scene, also the film’s first awkward conversation, introduces Man-hee (Kim Min-hee), a film sales agent working the festival with her humorless boss (Chang Mi-hee) and the director. The boss has an unpleasant task to perform: She wants to get Man-hee alone so she can dismiss her. At a cafe table on a Cannes side street, the news is broken, with supreme vagueness. The boss alludes to Man-hee’s dishonesty and a recent “mistake.” Hong holds back the truth behind the evasions.

“It’d be nice to commemorate my firing this way,” Man-hee says, pulling out a camera for the world’s most forced selfie. (The look on Chang’s face is worth the price of admission.)

Eventually we learn the details. By chance, Claire gets to know everyone, and with her camera eternally in hand, her presence is comforting and a tiny bit agitating. She becomes the woman behind the narrative’s lightly worn machinations. Hong, an ’89 graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has no use for the customary Cannes glitz here. We’re miles from any red carpet or even a smidge of conspicuous glamour. “Claire’s Camera” favors muted pastels and ordinary balcony settings, or interiors of rented flats full of festival visitors, though the visitors typically are heard, not seen. The movie is the first Cannes-set project I’ve seen to actually capture the feeling of what it’s like being an anonymous ant somewhere on the back of an elephantine international film gathering.

I’m not entirely sure why the film works. Its blithe disinterest in telling a conventional story will leave some viewers, even discerning ones, feeling unsatisfied. Every moment of Hong’s latest is about the moment itself — the accumulation of misunderstandings, evasions and grace notes that populate all our lives.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune


“Claire’s Camera” -- 3.5 stars

No MPAA rating.

Running time: 1:08

Playing at: Digital Gym


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