La caméra de Claire

After viewing prolific and acclaimed South Korean director Sang-soo Hong's "The Day After", I went into my local library's film catalog and chose to see this one. As I've read one of the director's characteristics is to have awkward dialogue, and this movie filled that bill.

For me, the awkwardness can be annoying at times, but it also can be quite intriguing. Set at the Cannes Film Festival, the plot elements slowly unfold and come together as the film progresses. But I never really felt I completely understood it all.

The acting is most solid, and throwing the great actress Isabelle Huppert into the mix can never hurt. Always fascinating to watch her on screen.

All in all, I wish I could say I enjoyed it all but I felt the film did have its intriguing and engaging moments

I assume it was trying to say something. I didn't understand it at first so I kept waitching. Was this an essay on the futility of movie-making? On the futility of watching a movie because it has one of your favourite actresses and you assume it will be at least worthwhile as a result? Maybe. How it got an "80" critics' rating eludes me as well. I can only assume these people all figured that if they didn't understand the point of it then it must be really profound. They were wrong. Honestly, don't bother.

The plot is minimalistic to the point of being ridiculous. The dialogues reminded me of tutorials for students who study a foreign language. They are rather primitive: "I am hungry" - "Are you hungry?" - "Yes, I am hungry". Luckily this film is only 1 hour and 8 minutes but it felt longer...I love Huppert but here she has the easiest acting job ever. What a waste of a great talent.

I don't really know what I was expecting from this film, the fact that it was only 1 hour and 8 minutes long, a lovely poster of the film, sunny and happy and then the word 'friendship' in the synopsis. Somehow I guess I expected a sweet and cute little film, something like a french-korean Before Sunrise, but it was not. Like other user reviewers have already mentioned, it's a very awkward film, I would guess the whole film is built up by 10 scenes, long takes with not much happening. The times I felt I got involved in the story, was when there was some drama between the korean actors, like the Director telling the Producer Lady his feelings about her, that was actually good. But the scenes with Isabelle was pretty stiff, shaky english and the dialouge became much slower than when they spoke in their native language. There's probably many things I missed with the film, but I'm not too eager to return back to it for a second watch, even if the film is just over 1 hour.

Huh? was my initial thought. Some scenes I felt made me mildly embarrassed but on reflection now realise it was a choice, by the director and myself. So a few days on and, much like the films premise, I've changed (but not my rating), I now nod my head and think hmmm.

This film has made me want to find out more about its directors work.