Bruno Dumont's Camillle Claudel 1915 – as distinct from Bruno Nuytten's 1988 biopic Camille Claudel – concerns just three days in the former sculptor's life. And she's eagerly waiting for her poet and dramatist brother Paul to pay her a visit.
This is a ninety-one minute film, although on the surface not a great deal happens, and the director Robert Bresson was brought strongly to my mind, the long shots dwelling on faces and things. This is very French cinema, a world away from the brash short shots of Hollywood.
It is a painful film, with Juliette being confined by her family to the Montdevergues asylum near Avignon, Vaucluse, well out of the way from anyone close to her, well away from the art by which she can express herself.
Although she cooks for herself because she fears that she'll be poisoned, she is a long way from the apparently hopelessly insane, and is very distanced from them and the sounds they make, although sometimes she can relate to their pain.
Her brother Paul sees her sculpture as her madness, and is himself portrayed as maddened by his religion: the two only meet face to face, in no way mind to mind, but then Camille says so little. A spellbinding film.
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