'Camille Claudel' : By Hal Hinson Washington Post Staff Writer December 21, 1989

Director: Bruno Nuytten Cast: Isabelle Adjani; Gerard Depardieu; Laurent Grevill; Alain Cuny Not rated Compare prices for this movie Find local video stores More movie shopping Save money with NextCard Visa

It's a gesture of elegant fervor, perfectly in keeping with the tone of this darkly sensuous, intensely passionate film. With it, Camille surrenders herself, at 20, to the 44-year-old sculptor, as his mistress and muse, and begins their long, ultimately tragic affair.

A gifted artist in her own right, Camille worked mostly in Rodin's shadow, both as his first female apprentice, who sculpted under her master's signature, and as an artist under his influence who put his revolutionary ideas into practice.

"Camille Claudel," which was written by Nuytten and Marilyn Goldin (from a biography by Reine-Marie Paris), is an attempt to establish Claudel's own claims to greatness. And though there is certainly a temptation to proclaim her an early heroine of feminism and a victim of a male-dominated, art-world hierarchy (both of which are true), the filmmakers have chosen instead to concentrate on the young sculptor's single-minded hunger to express herself, her romance with the mud.

For this they have picked a great actress as their star. Here, as in "The Story of Adele H.," Adjani shows not the slightest trace of restraint. This is a performance full of spirited, feminine turbulence from an actress with great stores of violent emotion at her disposal. There's a fierce light coming out of her eyes. When she has her climactic confrontations with her lover and mentor, she delivers the kind of rage that comes from deep in the gut, the kind that pushes you back against the wall -- the rage of the ages. But the deep absorption in her character is there in the quieter moments too, when, for example, she and Rodin sit in his carriage, with the sounds of the horses moving outside, and talk about their art and, indirectly, their desire for each other.

This is a movie of miraculous moments; even when you're uncertain about the thematic point of scene, you can feel the pulses of the actors. In the film's first scene we see Adjani's ability to demonstrate Camille's ravenous appetite for her work, as she struggles in freezing pitch black before dawn at river's edge filling a suitcase with clay, all to the racket of protest from her family. Depardieu is the perfect embodiment of Rodin's monumental energy, and he captures the declining spirit of the man who desperately needs the inspiration and fire that Camille brings to him.

The truly rare and great accomplishment of the film, though, is that it manages to express the impulses that drive artists in their work. Because of its kineticism, sculpture is an ideal form for this, and watching Adjani in the throes of creation, ravaging her clay with a combination of frustration and furious love, we see how much a product of emotion these works are.

Admittedly this is in some ways a gross romanticization, but it functions as a useful metaphor, even at its furthest limits. Camille Claudel's last show, in 1905, was not a success, and having broken off with Rodin and grown estranged from her brother, the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel (Laurent Grevill), she lived alone, impoverished and nearly mad. In 1914, after a year in a psychiatric hospital, she was transferred to the asylum near Avignon where she lived until her death in 1943. Her story is a tragedy, but Nuytten transmutes it into something more complex -- a life burned up in art that, nonetheless, burned intensely and grandly and left its mark.

Camille Claudel is rated R and is in French with English subtitles

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