Camille Claudel is a good story. She was Rodin's most famous pupil and Rodin is Paris and France's pre-eminent sculptor. The Rodin museum, culled from the house where he lived, is a real treasure in Paris and testimony to the artist's generosity. I think Claudel has some sculptures there, also.

So how could such a man treat poor Camille Claudel so harshly? I guess I wonder if he really did. Isabelle Adjani, who is a very beautiful woman, positively dissolves into a puddle of goo at the hands (bad pun) of Rodin. The French are much better at being historically accurate with biographies and the woman did lose it in her later years. But I guess I feel that Adjani is too melodramatic. Depardieu, playing Rodin, does what he can to salvage the movie, but the script
is too caught up in histronics and all I remember coming away from the movie is Camille's crying.

Adjani throws herself into the crying parts with a vengeance. But it's too much and there is no balance to the story. You can clearly see her illness at the end, but chances are that it was there from the beginning. The script doesn't give us much of that. Adjani had a similar role in her debut, The Story of Adele H. by Truffaut but there the mistreatment and anguish was much more believable.

Occasionally a French film misfires where it should hit the mark. This film, along with the recent film on Beaumarchais, are two good examples of films that don't work very well.



Recommended: No