克莱尔的相机

故事发展像是解迷的过程，克莱尔的相机把人物都联系起来，所有人扁平化地排列在照片里，然后展开。很多解构式的影评可以从电影的细节挖掘，相机、大狗狗、女主穿热裤、将衣服随意剪开都代表着什么，已有众多有深度的评价了。

相比《独自在夜晚的海边》侧重描写女主的心境变化，我觉得这出戏更聚焦概念表达。比如如何改变已经发生的事物呢，只能再仔细地看一次；男性凝视是怎样无理的呢；老板的嫉妒是什么样的呢。可能太注重冷眼旁观的叙事态度，感觉每一个演员在里面的个人魅力都没有得到充分发挥。

习惯了精致的电影刚开始会觉得只有看似“小儿科”的推拉拍摄手法、英语书对话式的台词、尴尬的表演…像是戛纳的电影吗？是洪尚秀导演的作品吗？是年代比较久远电影的摄影艺术还在研究吗？慢慢的会发现这部电影是细腻的、直白的，没有过多的技巧，只运用了基本的推拉、变焦、一镜到底，看似尴尬的英文对话，但它确实这部电影里的唯一语言，洪尚秀能在短短的七十分钟内成熟的打造一个环绕结构，将金敏喜得美表达的特别细腻，中间那段无厘头的谩骂高潮其实特别的强，台词里暴露出苏导演对“美女”的刻板印象，女老板对万熙的嫉妒，克莱尔对万熙美的欣赏，以及万熙自己内心的温柔和细腻，与其说是三个人对万熙的美的影响，不如说是洪尚秀对金敏喜美的三种不同幻想吧，化身为中年女老板的嫉妒、男导演的爱而不得、女摄影师将她视为灵感缪斯的模特….三个不同身份的人对万熙的美产生了不同的影响，人物刻画十分成熟。看似儿戏的呈现手法，实则是一部十分成熟的电影，就像是洪尚秀的随笔，最浪漫最令人佩服的是，洪尚秀导演边参加戛纳边花9天时间拍摄出这部属于金敏喜的《克莱尔的相机》。

《克莱尔的相机》邀请了两个重量级演员：一个韩国大美女金敏喜，一个法国国宝级演员于佩尔，作为陪衬，讲述了一个极具现实意义的故事：导演怎么去寻找灵感？是否需要为艺术献身？献身后的羞耻感怎么破？

不过这个导演非常幸运，周围有个从生活和情感上都给予无微不至照顾的制片人。导演为了艺术献身，她自然应该为导演扫平障碍，哪怕是一丁点的心理阴影。缪斯重要么？重要，但为了导演的未来，缪斯也可以成为随意牺牲的陪葬品。

于是，我们曾经腹黑、心计深沉大《小姐》金敏喜诱受，成功的变成了被随意牺牲的傻白甜缪斯。而且本片导演打破电影常规，用了几乎超越纪录片的超现实主义模式，采用家庭DV的拍摄手法，以毫不了解情况的外人——客观第三者的视角来展示这个复杂而深沉的主题。

几位主角的演技自是无可挑剔，因为作为客观第三者视角，我们大部分时间其实根本也看不到演员的表情，自是无可挑剔也无法挑剔的。

只有大师级导演才会成就这么先锋试验性的电影：完全打破一切电影镜头语言的常规要求，长时间两人对话的固定镜头；所有情节都是靠对话推进；时间顺序、逻辑顺序乱而不杂；风景优美的电影胜地戛纳，完全拍出了陈旧腐败、藏污纳垢的衰败感……我们应该为导演的大胆突破和对艺术的讽刺而喝彩！

哈哈哈，我要爱死了老洪这个推拉摇移的镜头了，多么不屑，多么随意，多么暧昧，多么犹豫徘徊胆怯摇摆无立场。老洪真是个艺术家。

敏敏说英语太好听了，hahaha，像个初高中学习很好又很乖巧的小姑娘。如果把镜头推到腰肢或者胸腹，停一秒，我感觉能看到一个高中低年级女生的“抽条感”。

看老洪的电影，看着看着就笑了。是看到某个地方，会心一笑。哈哈哈，太可爱了，又太尴尬了。有种低落的淘气和自恋。用我一片文章的话就是“不屈服的温柔狰狞”。不过老洪还不算狰狞，我觉得他年轻的时候一定“狰狞”过。

这个电影拍的真的好随意啊，不是老洪最好的电影。是“发行商写字楼味道”的老洪。不是“海味”的老洪，不是“艺术家味”的老洪，更不是“烧酒瓶味”的老洪。即便这部电影里这些元素都出现了，但这电影真的很一般，在老洪所有的电影里。

我为什么讨厌婚宴，一个桌子上总有海参和鲍鱼，甚至一个盘子里。海参和鲍鱼能顿一起吗？好像也能，但这个一百加一百小于一的事情，我很讨厌。以后千万不要把敏敏和于佩尔放一起了，即便佩姨是我们老于家的人，即便是一个天才导演，但真的做不出等于二百的东西来，更别说要出现事半功倍的效果了。

老洪真是爱拍漂亮女孩子抽烟啊。能把抽烟的女孩子拍的如此不做作，如此自然，真的好会选角色啊。

我爱老洪。老洪的电影是我的顾影自怜。

Your mileage may vary, but for this reviewer’s money, one’s appreciation of South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo is an acquired taste, veering from a vapid non-starter IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (2004), which more or less flounders in its rigid formality where connotations are lost in translation, to RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN (2015), a revitalizing two-hander that redefines film’s narratological possibilities, and hits the home run with reverberating impact for all its niceties and relatability.

2017 proves to be the most prolific year for Hong to date, with three films released within a calendar year, ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE debuts in Berlin and Kim Min-hee nicks a Silver Bear trophy for BEST ACTRESS, THE DAY AFTER enters the main competition in Cannes, where CLAIRE’S CAMERA also has a special screening in the sidebar, all in the aftermath of the cause célèbre, Hong’s cut-and-dried extramarital affair with his muse Kim Min-hee, which both acknowledge with rather admirable candor in public.

Therefore, it is particularly intriguing for aficionados to tease out any clues of Hong’s own response to the scandal in these three films, all encompass infidelity with Kim Min-hee playing three different characters in the center, as Hong is astute enough to make hay while the sun shines as far as self-reference is concerned.

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE can be easily construed as an explicit response to the explosion of Hong’s private life, but mostly from the viewpoint of Kim, structurally a lopsided diptych, its first 20 minutes takes places in a Mitteleuropean town, actress Young-hee (Min-hee), visits her lady friend Jee-young (Seo), to cool her heads off after the scandal of her affair with a married movie director breaks out, after that, she returns to South Korea and touches base with her old acquaintances, including Myung-soo (Jeong Jae-yeong, who is so adept in inhabiting an anodyne man’s aw-shucks front), Chun-woo (Kwon Hae-hyo) and Jun-hee (Song Seon-mi, who steals a cute girl-on-girl kiss), during dinner, she lets rip her “entitlement to love” statement to a stunned audience, apparently is jilted by the director, a lonesome Young-hee seeks for a closure, and one day on the beach alone, she might find a way to achieve that, Hong struts his illusory sleight-of-hand with distinction.

THE DAY AFTER is shot in a bleached monochrome, Bong-wan (Kwon, promoted to a leading role, whose multifaceted ability, including tear shedding, is as protuberant as his underbite) is a married man who runs a small publish house, who has an affair with his assistant Chang-sook (Kim Sae-byuk, who is extraordinary in showing up a temperamental paramour’s blandness and selfishness), while their relationship breaks off, he hires a new assistant Ah-reum (Min-hee). On the first day of her job, Bong-wan’s wife Hae-joo (Yoon-hee, geared up with a fishwife’s voltage), alights on a billet-doux written by him, rushes to the publish house to confront Ah-reum, whom she mistakes as the mistress. The misapprehension takes a nasty turn when Chang-sook returns later that very day, conniving together with Bong-wan to get an upper hand, at the expense of the innocent Ah-reum, which concludes “the day”, then “after” an indeterminate time, Ah-reum revisits the publish house in the epilogue, plus ça change, a man is eternally obsessed with his “wife, lover, potential lover” circle of fantasies, his self-deception (or short memory) like a cold rapier thrusts into an ingénue’s expectation, for old time’s sake? But one day does hardly amount to an “old time”.

CLAIRE’S CAMERA is the shortest, runs succinctly about 69 minutes, suitably as a digestif after the one-two punch, and reunites Hong with Isabelle Huppert as the titular Claire, a French high school music teacher (here, Hong hints the connection with ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE in the interrelationship), visiting Cannes during the festival season, and habitually takes pictures with her obsolete instant camera, befriends a Korean girl Man-hee (Min-hee), an employee of a Korean film sales company here in town for business, who has justly received a kiss-off by her boss Yang-hye (Chang Mi-hee) for being “dishonest” albeit her goodheartedness, only through Claire’s photos, who also fraternizes with a visiting Korean movie director So Wan-soo (Jin-young, is assigned with an unthankful job of mansplaining that might get one’s back up) and Yang-hye, the real reason of her abrupt dismiss will dawn on a befogged Man-hee, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Watching three movies in a row, Hong’s modus operandi is destined to loom large: his trademark racking focus shots, the omnipresent facing-off composition, interrupted time-line in the narrative to jostle for a viewer’s attention and comprehension, a keen eye to the background movement, and a curiosity to the sea, all leads to his philosophizing approach, to entangle gender politics, relationship hiccups, emotional complex among coevals and exotic friendship through garden-variety dialogues, often synchronizing with the intake of food and beverage.

While THE DAY AFTER loses some of its luster by emphasizing a treacherous scheme that one might question its credence, and CLAIRE’S CAMERA feels like an extemporaneous dispatch when Hong realizes he has some time to expend in Cannes during his festival junket. It its ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE leaves the strongest impression, not just for Kim Min-hee’s much layered interpretation of a woman’s bewilderment, disaffection and desolation, but also Hong’s absurdist inset that piquantly ties viewers in knots (what is the deal with that mysterious man-in-black?), that is definitely a welcoming sign for any number of established auteurs.

referential entries: Hong Sang-soo’s IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (2012, 4.6/10), RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN (2015, 8.4/10).