MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: CAMILLE CLAUDET (1988)

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

CAMILLE CLAUDET (1988)

Add Bruno Nuytten to the lensers-who-failed-as-meggers list. This big, glossy piece of politically correct bio-theatrics drowns in the fetid waters of official certification. (5 Cesars, natch.) Isabelle Adjani reprises her obsessive tropes from L’HISTOIRE D’ADELE H to little effect as the doomed titular sculptress while Gerard Depardieu keeps his dignity (just) in a cliched conception of a Rodin who mused, used & abused. Only Laurent Grevill as brother Paul Claudet, a major figure in French lit., though you’d barely know it here, shows the slightest attention to character detail. And how convincingly he ages. The whole swoony contraption reeks of Minnelli & Rosza (LUST FOR LIFE/MADAME BOVARY), but without any stylistic consistency. Rodin’s standard was "clay more alive than flesh," so don’t look here.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

CAMILLE CLAUDET (1988)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE