Juliette Binoche (The English Patient, Hidden, Three Colours: Blue) gives a mesmerising performance as celebrated French artist and sculptor Camille Claudel in this study of her tragic later years by Bruno Dumont, director of Hadewijch (winner of the 2009 FIPRESCI Prize), Flanders, Humanity (both Cannes Grand Prix winners) and Hors Satan.
Near the end of a startling career, and after a long and defining affair with fellow artist and sculptor Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel is suffering from mental health issues; she is paranoid, convinced of a plot to poison her, and that Rodin is involved.
Consigned to an asylum near Avignon by her brother, poet Paul Claudel, she lives amongst the truly afflicted – the uncompromising Dumont continues his habit of using non-professional actors, setting the film inside a real asylum and using the residents and staff to make up much of the supporting cast – and tries to convince her doctor she is not one of them. Desperate to see her brother again, she writes and begs him to authorise her release.
Dumont’s austere but compassionate film follows three days of Claudel’s confinement; her suffering documented in startlingly intimate close-ups, with his camera lingering on Binoche’s frantic, injured face.
Guaranteed to garner significant press attention, the film has been hailed in early reviews as a step forward for the already-acclaimed auteur.