Camille Claudel

Paris 1885: by night, a sculptress fills a suitcase with clay from a workman's trench. Such is the intense dedication of Camille Claudel (Adjani), whose desire to win favourable patronage from Rodin (Depardieu) drives her into a disastrous affair with that womanising egotist, thus alienating her family (including poet Paul). As ever in movies about artistic genius, a break-up sends Camille round the bend - a surefire guarantee of prolific productivity, the inevitable neglect of which, by a blinkered bourgeois intelligentsia, pushes her into ever more manic creativity and misery. Nuytten's film would seem far less banal if it were half the length; at almost three hours, we are simply left with trite ideas about artistic inspiration, and a glossy costumer that makes all too predictable points about the ambivalent nature of insanity, the importance of status and money in the art world, and the position of women in a male-dominated society.