How sad is this?

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Biography of Camille Claudel. The sister of writer Paul Claudel, her enthusiasm impresses already-famous sculptor Auguste Rodin. He hires her as an assistant, but soon Camille begins to sculpt for herself and for Rodin. She also becomes his mistress. But after a while, she would like to get out of his shadow...Women as artists is an interesting topic. As with just about every field, men have long been the dominant ones, and women have been left out of history. This seems very strange with regard to artists, though. Why are almost all the famous artists men? You don't need schooling, it's not necessarily a "job". Anyone with talent and free time can be an artist.Claudel, I confess, is not someone I knew. But, I didn't know her brother either. If not for Rodin, this whole world presented in the film would be foreign to me. Mayhaps I need to brush up on European artists between the wars?

Former cinematographer Bruno Nuytten's directorial debut from 1988 which gained two Academy Award nominations in 1989, is based on the novel "Camille Claudel" by Reine-Marie Paris, grand-daughter of Camille Claudel's brother Paul Claudel, which was adapted by Bruno Nuytten and Marylin Goldin. Isabelle Adjani won the Silver Berlin Bear at the 39th Berlin Film Festival in 1989 for her role in this film which tells the story about French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943) and her relationship with impressionist sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) who became her teacher and lover during the early 19th century in Paris, France before the First World War.With warm, colorful visuals, atmospheric music and detailed milieu depictions, this precisely filmed character-driven drama finely captures the era it portrays and the development of an historic figure who became a true artist. Isabelle Adjani's interpretation of an ardent and self-disciplined young woman raised in a middle-class family who struggled with her art and with her love is remarkable, and so is Gérard Depardieu's performance as the love of her life Auguste Rodin. Their acting is solely reason enough to see this interesting and well told biographical period piece which centres on an unusually crafted love-story between two great artists.

And rarely shown on US television, I recently caught this on Ovation channel; luckily I have satellite.Isabelle Adjani is wonderful as tragic Camille Claudel, apprentice to narcissistic sculptor Auguste Rodin, who is at the nadir of his profession when he meets Claudel. Claudel is at first naive and young, falling for Rodin and his grandiosity, he declares her work genius, but gradually undermines her spirit and mental health. We see a foreshadowing of his envy when he first meets Claudel, and comments that at least she still has a passion for her art, which he has lost long ago.The photography of the stark and cold Paris studio in February is haunting, we feel the cold as Claudel sets up her clay in the crumbling white studio, with no heat or fire. Paris is freezing in February.Claudel's family denigrates her ambition, except for her brother who empathizes but cannot really help an aspiring female artist (unheard of, and certainly a bane to Rodin's ego).Eventually her unraveling begins, as she feels Rodin is conspiring her downfall; Claudel had suffered a form of paranoid schizophrenia, interesting that as a female artist she garners less sympathetic reviews than the ego-maniacal Picasso or misogynistic Man Ray.Overall this film is a do not miss which deserves 10/10 for tackling a difficult and painful subject some would rather turn a blind eye toward: women artists in history.

I agree with the other posters. This is an excellently photographed film, rich in detail, with marvelous acting. It is also totally depressing and way too long.I thought Isabelle Adjani's beauty was heart-stopping - absolutely luminescent. Those eyes, that skin - she is one of the great beauties of all time. That depressed me also, in the age of Brittany and all the other blonds. I suppose it's the foreign versus American perspective but give me my druthers, and I'll take Adjani's looks -- and presence -- any day!This story is being made into a musical by Frank Wildhorn for his wife, the beautiful and talented Linda Eder. I can't imagine a worse subject.