Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

dromasca The year is 2017, Camille Claudel is back in town and she seems to go through a revival and reevaluation of her work and short artistic career. A museum dedicated to her life and art opened in March in the small French town of Nogent-sur-Seine, and the museum includes many of the works that survived the agitated 20th century and the destruction by the artist's own hands. Books are being written about her, and art history starts to take her seriously into account. Before this however, there were the films, and especially this one Camille Claudel from 1988. It is not exaggerated to say, I believe, that the film prepared her comeback to the world of arts.Camille Claudel deals more with the character of Camille Claudel, her love story with Auguste Rodin, her relationship with her brother Paul, one of the important French poets of the first half of the 20th century than with her art. Actually one of the few critical observations one may have about the visual part of the film is that there is so little art in it, and from the film we cannot make to ourselves an idea about how good she was. We see an artist fighting with her material, we see a woman fighting prejudice in a world and at a time when women were far from being recognized as equal professionally to men, even less in arts. We see the young woman and artist falling under the fascination of her master and being torn between love and admiration for him, and the need to express herself, to be herself. We see her falling down the spiral of vanity and then madness, and it's up to us to judge whether the roots of her fall are in the social environment, in the attitude of her lover who may be a great artist but is also a womanizer and small human being in terms of relations, or in her own vanity and narcissism. Add to this the ambiguity of the relationship to her brother, and we can now understand the willingly or not, the focus of the script and director Bruno Nuytten was on her personal path rather than on her art.For Bruno Nuytten this was the first film as director, but he already had in 1988 a long career as cinematographer, including a few superb films by Claude Berri. Not everything works or better said, not everything stood the almost 30 years since the film was made. Isabelle Adjani is superb, beautiful and ambitious, a fighter but fragile at the same time, turn between love and vanity. This is one of her best roles. Gérard Depardieu is very fit to Rodin's role, at that time his physical qualities were also perfect and added to his huge talent. The cinematography of the film (signed by Pierre Lhomme ) is excellent, and there are many scenes to remember - in the studio where Rodin and Claudel are shown fighting with the material from which they extracted their works, and out in the nature with clear allusions to the period of the Impressionists when this film is set. On the other hand the soundtrack is horrible. The use of violin music which would have been exaggerated even for a melodrama made in 1938, it's simply a disaster for this film about art and artists made in 1988. Add to this the poor quality of the sound (at least in the copy screened by ARTE TV) which makes half of the dialog incomprehensible even when it is not covered by violins. Maybe digital sound re-working will sometimes in the future save this film. It is highly deserved.

w-koenigsmann This is an excellent film and I highly recommend it. The imagery and soundtrack is lush, and the story focuses intensely on Camille's perfectionism and fortitude, all the while depicting her descent into madness, although some claim she wasn't mad, merely a woman ahead of her time, and thus ostracized.From what I have read of various biographies of Camille Claudel, I understand that she was a woman ahead of her time; she scorned the bourgeois, just as many artists, writer, and musicians did -- in the same way that modern artists scorn the common, small-minded, and narrow society (read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf for a good understanding of the artist's situation in society).Following the pattern of Vincent van Gogh and Franz Schubert, Camille Claudel was not a great "promoter" of her works, and, to make things worse, the bourgeois society, just like today, failed to understand her art (again, like the plight of Vincent van Gogh and many others).At her core, Camille Claudel was a true rebel, not because she wanted to be, but because she had to. Camille Claudel was a true artist, in the very deepest sense.

writers_reign Opinion - on this board - appears to be divided on this one and I find myself on the side of the boosters. This movie is nothing if not sumptuous, crammed with images and imagery that fill the screen and spill over the sides - not for nothing did Nyuttens photograph Manon des Sources among others - so that decent acting and a workable plot would almost be a bonus. In fact the film has it all; an interesting and little explored background (sculpting) a story of two real artists who were active almost, if not quite, within living memory who are portrayed by two exceptional actors - Adjani and Depardieu teamed up again a couple of years ago in another 'period' story, Bon Voyage - who are able to extract the last nuance out of their characters. Rumour has it that it was Adjani who originated the project and even if her only object was to provide a meaty role for her herself she is to be applauded for doing so. Whoever and however this project was originated and brought to fruition it was a great idea which has been magnificently realized.

blanche-2 I agree with the other posters. This is an excellently photographed film, rich in detail, with marvelous acting. It is also totally depressing and way too long.I thought Isabelle Adjani's beauty was heart-stopping - absolutely luminescent. Those eyes, that skin - she is one of the great beauties of all time. That depressed me also, in the age of Brittany and all the other blonds. I suppose it's the foreign versus American perspective but give me my druthers, and I'll take Adjani's looks -- and presence -- any day!This story is being made into a musical by Frank Wildhorn for his wife, the beautiful and talented Linda Eder. I can't imagine a worse subject.