Masterful Movie

disgusting, overrated, pointless

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

I wonder how is it possible that, since so many of the comments deal with the level of acting in this film, no one pays tribute to Alain Cuny portraying Camille Claudel's father. His presence is, to say the least, commanding. Watch the scene, when Rodin visits the family at their cottage, where the two lovers half-hidden behind curtains indulge in their lust in the front of the tableau, while father Claudel slaps his son at the background. This is crucial, for two reasons: it displays that the actors here are working as an ensemble, and that the steeling and always, thoughtfully, underplayed tension between father and son, cuttingly explain Laurent Grevill's portrait of Paul Claudel as a believer's thrust undercut by a profoundly melancholic repression and the guilt of the witness who spills into being an onlooker. This is, perhaps, the grimmest intuition the film offers us in terms of the artist's relation to his place in society.All this is brought to sublime heights when Alain Cuny recites some verses of Paul Claudel: not one of the film's tensions is left out and, yet, the instance breaks out of its context. This is a masterclass of acting in a nutshell.

This film is beyond beautiful and beyond heartbreaking. After 19 years, it still tears the heart right out of me. I first saw "Camille Claudel" while it was on it's Oscar campaign in 1990 for "Best Foreign Film" and "Best Actress - Isabelle Adjani". I hadn't really begun to appreciate foreign film yet so I had no idea what to expect. What I saw was an angel beyond description giving one of the greatest acting performances I had EVER seen, still to this day. This film is heart-wrenching in it's beauty and romantic tragedy. In fact it makes art of it. I went back to the theater to watch it six times, I even dragged friends along. Yes the film was brilliant, but what I went back to see was perhaps the most beautiful woman I've ever seen on the big screen. Isabelle Adjani's beauty in this film is breath-taking and her performance is one of the most intense and deeply moving in history. I have this film on VHS and DVD. I still love to watch it.

This is one of the films I actually would give more than 10 points ! Judging from other comments, it seems that people either love this film very much, or they hate it. I was particularly impressed by Isabelle Adjani's performance as an artist and lover of Rodin who changed between devotion and obsession. Until I saw that film I had the impression that her (IA's) most important task in films was to look good. Admittedly, I did not know that many films with her in it. And she was, and is, pretty good at fulfilling that task. Her multi-faceted role as Camille Claudel was truly spectacular, considerably better than that of her colleague Gérard Depardieu who, nevertheless, was quite impressive as Rodin.

Spoilers herein.Like the life it depicts, this has flashes of brilliance but is overall a failure. On the plus side, we have an appealing enough actress who has what it takes to convince her she would be desirable to Rodin. But there is no conveyance of the realities and burdens of talent, no glimpses into the mind of madness and creative genius. There is a nice, somewhat sculptural framing, beginning with the `stealing' clay from a workmens' ditch (and hen going to incestual, erotic visual poetry. This is recalled near the end with her similarly burying her work.But in between is rather dull, predictable march through some events. What a great film this could have been.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.