While and after seeing Camille Claudel, one wonders if one should celebrate the artist that could have been, or rather mourn the moronic hypocrites populating her world. A world whose Marquesean death was foretold.Almost everyone played by the supporting cast displayed (or tried to hide) how acutely and incurably they were suffering with diseases, physical and mental. With the sole and occasional exception of her father, everyone else treated the artist in a less than human manner. Despot mother, Hypocrite brother, Deceitful love! What real treasures had this Genius woman of her times to cope with! To top it all she happened to be living in such a dysfunctional society which years later, a great filmmaker and artist of the same nation, Jean Renoir, was to label as "corrupt to the core". Amen to Renoir. This film like most any other film depicting the real dilemma of a society, makes one pay an additional salute to his Le Regle Du Ju.

There's some nice photography in here, which is what helped me get through this long (159 minutes) soap opera-type story about the girlfriend (the title name, played by Isabelle Adjani) of the famous sculptor Rodin (Gerard Depardieu). There are a lot of closeups of Adjani which was fine with me as I never get tired of seeing her looks. "Camille" also was a sculptor but when the romance with Rodin went sour, she went literally crazy. This movie details that saga.In addition to the cinematography, you get to see some great sculptures - really good pieces of work. I just wish they had shown how the artists accomplished these pieces. Since they are just actors, all it did was show the two leads chipping away chunks of clay, never showing any detail work.At least, the film made me appreciate the art form more.

This is an excellent film and I highly recommend it. The imagery and soundtrack is lush, and the story focuses intensely on Camille's perfectionism and fortitude, all the while depicting her descent into madness, although some claim she wasn't mad, merely a woman ahead of her time, and thus ostracized.From what I have read of various biographies of Camille Claudel, I understand that she was a woman ahead of her time; she scorned the bourgeois, just as many artists, writer, and musicians did -- in the same way that modern artists scorn the common, small-minded, and narrow society (read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf for a good understanding of the artist's situation in society).Following the pattern of Vincent van Gogh and Franz Schubert, Camille Claudel was not a great "promoter" of her works, and, to make things worse, the bourgeois society, just like today, failed to understand her art (again, like the plight of Vincent van Gogh and many others).At her core, Camille Claudel was a true rebel, not because she wanted to be, but because she had to. Camille Claudel was a true artist, in the very deepest sense.

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.