Camille Claudel 1915

Camille Claudel was a successful artist who had an affair with Rodin. She had mental health problems and was placed in an asylum by her family. Whether this was intended to resolve Camille's problem or remove Camille as a problem is left for debate.

The film tells the story of her life in the asylum, her desire to leave and her unhappiness. We gain an insight into the artist's mind and the world of the asylum. Juliet Binoche's acting is excellent and the use of patients and staff from an asylum works well although is potentially controversial.

However, the film is slow and is too long for the little is actually revealed in 95 minutes of screen time. More back story and context is needed to provide reasons for sympathising with the main character and sticking with the film.

"There is something sadder to lose than life – the reason for living." Paul Claudel, poet, playwright, diplomat and younger brother of Camille.

Camille Claudel 1915 is not The King of Hearts, a lyrical 1966 drama about a WWII French asylum in a town about to be invaded by Nazis. Claudel is decidedly not lyrical except for its exceptionally artistic cinematography dominated by trees that look like sculptures and buildings ancient with secrets.

It's a somber but fascinating three-day narrative about artist Camille Claudel's confinement in a madhouse while she is awaiting her famous mystic-poet brother, Paul, to visit her.

Previous to 1915, Camille had been the student and lover of Auguste Rodin, the most famous French sculptor of his time and one of the greatest in the history of civilization. Her incarceration was due to her paranoia in general about his alleged plot to poison her and her schizophrenia, both reflected after breaking up with Rodin in her smashing her sculptures in her own studio.

This film deals little with Rodin but much with her brother, who refused her entreaties, and those of the mental hospital staff, to release her. His chilling visitation to her is redolent of his reliance on a mystical relation with God and certainty that she not be released to go home. The introductory quote suggests he may not have adhered to his own philosophy by ignoring the signs that she was sane and the reality of denying her a reason to live.

This stark film concentrates mostly on her lonely struggle to protect herself from the plot to poison her and her loss of her sculptures and tools. Her artistry is supplanted by boiling potatoes and avoiding crazed fellow inmates. She says in one of her letters, "Madhouses are houses made on purpose to cause suffering….I cannot stand any longer the screams of these creatures." The movie is static but intensely suggestive through the brilliant Binoche's expressions of wisdom and isolation.

It's not hard to sympathize with an artist robbed of her livelihood and family. That she may truly be schizophrenic and paranoid is always possible; however Binoche's humanity tips the scale in favor of Camille's sanity and the world's indifference. As a woman and an artist in the shadow of Rodin, she is doomed to second-class citizenship.

Camille will spend almost three decades without hope: "Sadder than to lose one's possessions is to lose one's hope." Paul Claudel

My high respect for Juliette Binoche's technique and talent has been bolstered by watching her performance as Camille Claudel in this film. The film itself presents a stunning vision of mental illness and its treatment in the age prior to advanced psychotropic drugs. I am a registered nurse and worked for ten years with very symptomatic psychiatric patients in hospital. Ms. Binoche's subtle performance captures the painful boredom of confinement, both physical and mental. Confined mentally by her anxiety and paranoia, Camille is sealed off from satisfying human contact with the sane, while being tortured by the attentions and needs of those more disabled than herself. The well-meant attempts of nuns to engage her with those whom she fears come across as nearly sadistic. This subtlety marks the film as exceptional in my opinion. The appearance of the religiously fanatic and equally disturbed brother, Paul Claudel, who functions as her jailer, adds a feminist sensitivity to the film. Camille's powerlessness is largely feminine in her sexist world. The interplay between religion and confinement, physical and mental, is also brought to light through Paul Claudel's obsessive grandiosity as he converses with his god. Who are sane or insane? The depressed nuns? The grinning abbot? The pompously righteous brother? Camille hoping for release? No answers are given, in typically French fashion. But this film is well worth the time and reflection.

I wanted to leave this screening about halfway through, but not because it was a terrible film. On the contrary, it was because Dumont's impeccably observed production evokes the same sense of claustrophobia experienced by its titular character, who is yearning for release from the asylum to which she had been committed by her family.

For most of the film's duration, neither Camille nor the audience are entirely clear about why she was incarcerated, or at least, why she remains so. What little back story we are given is relayed principally by Camille herself, and in a manner that suggests more eccentricity than madness. I had not read up on Claudel prior to seeing this film, but having done so since, I absolutely endorse Dumont's rendering.

The direction is unhurried and the dialogue minimal. Long takes abound, soundtracked by repetitive noises like echoing footsteps, the crunching of gravel, and, most disconcertingly, the infantile howling of the asylum's residents. The sense of place and aesthetic is intelligently realised, and for all its oppressive qualities, this film is a beautiful thing to look at.

As Camille, Binoche shines like the genuine star she is - a genius artist playing a genius artist. The occasional closeup (and there are many) may reveal a composure running one or two shades too deep for this character, however whenever our heroine cracks, Binoche exemplifies her mastery at bridling and channeling female psychology. The other figure in the narrative equation - Camille's brother Paul - is played by Vincent in turns both tender and oblique.

Thematically, Dumont does not preach, but tantalisingly throws juxtaposition after juxtaposition before us, inviting manifold readings.

Rather than write a critical analysis here, it will suffice to say that there is much to be gleaned from this film, notwithstanding biography.

8.5/10

The only other Bruno Dumont film I've seen is the bizarre and shocking Twentynine Palms so knowing Camille Claudel 1915 is about an insane asylum, it's difficult to not expect something that will rock me to my core. However, Camille is surprisingly restrained. While this feels like a mature approach at times, it can too often feel like it's too weak on its themes of religion, sanity and art when there's such potential. A little more focus and clarity could've saved what would be a great film. What ends up making the film is Juliette Binoche's committed performance that provides a unique perspective into a personal hell. She certainly deserves to be called one of the best actresses of all-time and this just confirms it further. It's beautifully shot and constructed, but then this leads to it feeling too measured and thus too forced when it could've been much better if it was allowed to breathe naturally. It's a very interesting film, but I can't help that it needn't been as empty as it was.

7/10