MOVIE REVIEW : A Romantic Tragedy in the Grand Manner

The two most important lines in Bruno Nuytten’s soaring, heart-breaking “Camille Claudel” (at the Royal) are “She has the talent of a man,” which is quickly followed by “She is a witch.” The remarks are made by friends of the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin (Gerard Depardieu) just after he has feverishly chipped away the cast of a bust of himself sculpted from memory by Camille Claudel (Isabelle Adjani), who at this very moment has progressed from his apprentice, model, muse and lover to the dangerous position of rival. Those two observations, both uttered by men, of course, help seal the fate of Claudel.

Rodin (1840-1917), creator of “The Thinker,” remains one of the most famous sculptors of all time, and virtually every student of literature is familiar with the French poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel (1868-1955). Even so, it is quite possible never to have heard of the tragic woman who linked the two men until this film or the recent Reine-Marie Paris book, which Nuytten and Marilyn Goldin adapted to the screen. This terrible and unjust obscurity is the very point of the film.

“Camille Claudel,” which is France’s official Academy Award entry, is a romantic tragedy in the grand manner, accompanied by a stormy score and unfolding amid settings that are period perfect, right down to cutlery and stemware. It’s a rich, darkly gorgeous film, with tempestuous lovers played with bravura and bristling intelligence by Adjani and Depardieu in what are surely two of their best performances. Yet “Camille Claudel” is more than a Bohemian “Wuthering Heights,” because it is told from a contemporary perspective of controlled feminist rage. One of the most distinguished cinematographers of the international cinema, Nuytten makes a dazzling directorial debut with this film, which never loses its briskness and energy throughout its 149-minute running time.

When 21-year-old Camille and Rodin cross paths in February, 1885, he instantly recognizes her talent and backs her decision to leave her academic studies, convinced that she can learn by doing. “Work with the clay, inspiration doesn’t exist,” Rodin declares, but soon he is telling the beautiful Camille that she is his only inspiration, and art scholars today have declared her impact upon him as decisive, rescuing him from an academicism that eventually did overtake him.

From the start, Camille displays a determination so single-minded that she gets up in the middle of the night to steal clay from a deposit in the woods. For all her fierce independence of spirit, Camille is eventually swept off her feet by the man called “the greatest seducer since Victor Hugo.” Depardieu’s expansive, virile Rodin and Adjani’s exquisite Camille are the apotheosis of romantic lovers, working intensively in a derelict 18th-Century mansion in front of an immense dump.

Eventually, Camille realizes that the master sculptor himself has feet of clay, unwilling finally to forsake his longtime mistress (Daniele Lebrun) when she demands he choose between them. She has good reason to do so but has too much pride and self-respect to want to ensnare him. Striking out on her own, she works feverishly, but her life has begun its ever-accelerating downward spiral even as she approaches the brink of renown.

Camille’s story is one of gradual betrayal and abandonment by the three most crucial men in her life: Rodin, who after their initial break finds he can’t stand the possibility that Camille might just be his artistic equal (or, heaven forbid, better); her father (the splendid Alain Cuny), who had always encouraged her until her sculpture, so expressive of her sensuality and anguish, fails to gain public acceptance, and finally by her beloved brother Paul (Laurent Grevill), so long her defender. Only her devoted dealer Eugene Blot (Philippe Clevenot) stands by her, but there is no way he can make people buy Camille’s sculpture for all the good reviews they receive.

There is no doubt that in the face of so many setbacks the always emotionally turbulent Camille commences to lurch out of control, becoming obsessed that Rodin is actively trying to destroy her while engaging in increasingly eccentric behavior that can only harm her career. Camille does fall prey to a persecution complex, but her father, Rodin and finally Paul reveal themselves as being bourgeois to the core in their overriding concern with what people will think of the now-erratic Camille, whose mother was always her greatest enemy, to make matters much worse. The manner and finality with which Paul deals with his sister is shocking, yet not really when you consider what men have tried to do with troublesome women from the beginning of time.

That the film unfolds with such illuminating and persuasive psychological insight, much of it necessarily conjectural considering the scarcity of documentation concerning Camille, doubtless has much to do with the fact that Reine-Marie Paris, who served as the film’s technical adviser, is the grandniece of Camille and the granddaughter of Paul. If conflict is the handmaiden of creativity, then Camille and Paul Claudel were exposed to it in abundance, caught between an intellectual father of high expectations and a mother (Madeleine Robinson) of harsh, narrowly puritanical views.

Indeed, “Camille Claudel” (rated R for adult situations), beyond either star-crossed romance or feminist tract, captures what seems to the the essence--or at least the myth--of the French character as a unique distillation of pride, severity, elegance and passion.