Written by: Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan
Based on The New York Times Magazine article, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” by Nathaniel Rich
Produced by: Mark Ruffalo, Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, Bill Pullman.
Better living through chemistry – that’s the catch phrase from big chem company, DuPont.
For decades the company has been sticking Teflon onto everything: carpet, teeth whitener; it’s the stuff that makes fry pans, non-stick. The stuff is everywhere, making DuPont one billion a year in pure profit.
When Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) makes partner at a prestigious Cincinnati law firm, it’s everything he and his wife Sarah (Anne Hathaway) have worked for.
Until a couple of farmers from West Virginia turn up at the office with a box full of video tapes of dead or dying cows.
Rob’s grandmother who lives in the area gave the farmers his name because he’s an environmental attorney. A corporate environmental defence attorney for the chemical companies.
But what Rob sees when he visits his grandmother is enough to sue DuPont, resulting in a case spanning two decades, a case he continues to fight today.
It’s a classic David and Goliath tale of the small people being knowingly poisoned by the big chem company for profit.
Even with compassion fatigue (after seeing so many of these films and after watching what’s on the news), I was still stunned by the evil of a company that would knowingly lace cigarettes of employees with a toxic, man-made chemical to see what would happen.
Adding to the bleak story is the way the film was shot, in the middle of a bitterly cold winter of snow, flat colourless buildings in a small community filled with sick residents.
Stark and Anne Hathaway cast in a wholly unsuitable role – I just couldn’t believe her performance as the housewife: it’s depressing.
Yet, it’s a movie that starts to answer the question of why so many people seem to be getting cancer these days.
Not that every cancer is accountable to the dreaded man-made PFOA compound. But this is a story of just one of the ‘forever chemicals’ floating around. That once in the body can never be processed and eliminated.
It’s not the family or the expose that gives this film momentum – the story here is the truth of the story itself. And it’s bleak.
Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czemin
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Bill Nighy, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart, Josh O’Connor, Callum Turner, Rupert Graves, Gemma Whelan, Amber Anderson, Tanya Reynolds, Connor Swindells.
Love knows best.
Or, Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) knows best.
Living in Highbury Park with her widowed father, Mr. Woodhouse (Bill Nighy), Emma spends her days indulged as she plots to match and make those around her, careful never to fall in unnecessary matrimony herself.
That’s what she tells herself and others, including the insufferable and righteous Mr. Knightly (Johnny Flynn), the brother to her new brother-in-law. Mr. Knightly’s always on hand to point out her vanity.
Yes, Emma tells herself she doesn’t want marriage as she uses her influence to partner her new project and friend, Miss Harriet Smith (Mia Goth) with someone she thinks Harriet’s equal, the local vicar Mr. Elton (Josh O’Connor) (and not the besotted farmer Robert Martin (Connor Swindells), whom Harriet really cares for).
But underneath a cool demeanour Emma can’t stop the flutter of her heart when she hears of the return of the very handsome, Frank Churchill (Callum Turner).
Can you sense the period drama?
Based on the novel penned by Jane Austen (published in late December 1815), there’s plenty of lace and bonnets and piano forte playing and performance.
I admit, I could not have been in less of a mood to watch pomp and ceremony.
But despite my sigh of boredom at the beginning of the film, I found there was a sweetness and intrigue that I was slowly drawn into, helped along with the dry wit of Bill Nighy as Emma’s cantankerous but really warm-hearted father who considers a day at a wedding a truly awful day.
He’s always searching for that cold draft determined to flow through the house from some crack or cranny.
It’s really the comedy that saves this film, subtle, shown in a glance, a tsk, or a flummoxed, energetic jump from stair to floor.
So yes, sweet and funny with, Anya Taylor-Joy well-cast as the handsome, clever and rich Emma.
But this is a long movie (117 minutes), dragging with a yawn and watch-check in the first half hour, and then again when approaching the two-hour mark.
You’ve got to be in the mood for the period romance that is Emma – hence the release in time for a tolerable viewing on Valentine’s Day.
Starring: Rose Byrne, Salma Hayek, Tiffany Haddish.
“I love my friends, but I don’t think I can handle the judgement today.”
I’m trying to think of a moment I didn’t like in this film. Maybe because I’ve been watching nothing but serious movies, crime series or the school holiday kid flicks… Do I like a chick movie now, that gets it?! Maybe I do…
Best buddies Mel (Rose Byrne) and Mia (Tiffany Haddish) are living the dream, running their own makeup store.
Boutique and clever with ideas like the, One Night Stand pack, they work when they want, give cute nerdy-girl discounts to young prom beauties so they can shine from the inside out… But living the dream comes at a cost that leaves the entrepreneurs in crushing debt. Debt that will close their business without a huge investment from an external source. Like Claire Luna (Salma Hayek).
A gift, a rescue, Mel thinks, because she knows the finances. It’s Mia who’s the genius when it comes to product. Mia doesn’t want to give up control, but without financial backing Mel knows the company will sink.
Savvy businesswoman Luna proposes a compromise, forty-nine percent if the girls can continue to work together, fifty-one percent if the partnership doesn’t last.
Confident in their friendship, the two besties agree to the terms not realising the lengths this ‘angry carrot – that’s not her hair,’ will go to in order to drive them apart.
There are some genuine chick moments that strikes a chord here, the setting of friend against friend unveiling some of that passive aggressive behaviour we’ve all been guilty of, when confronting a friend is just too hard.
I mean, I could go on about directors and actors and how the film was shot, but this movie’s all about the comedy and friendship of these two girls being themselves. Exactly what I was in the mood for.
I loved seeing Jennifer Coolidge as shop assistant, Sydney – gorgeous woman! And seeing chicks deal with the stress of it all without being dickheads about it is a lot of fun.
I know I’m being a bit lazy with this review, but right now? Like everyone else these days, I feel busy. So with this screening, I enjoyed taking a break and just having a laugh.
Produced by: Aaron L. Gilbert, Jay Roach, p.g.a., Robert Graf, Michelle Graham, Charles Randolph, p.g.a., Margaret Riley, Charlize Theron, p.g.a., Beth Kono, A.J. Dix
Starring: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, John Lithgow, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, with Malcolm McDowell, with Allison Janney, and Margot Robbie.
When a young ambitious woman looking for a promotion asks whether her humiliation of showing a little more than just her legs because, ‘Television is a visual medium’, will go further than the office of Fox News’ founder Roger Ailes, he replies, ‘I’m discreet but unforgiving’.
With lines stated like this and quotes from Donald Trump like, ‘You can’t rape your spouse’, there was plenty of real-life material here to make an uncomfortable story come to life.
Bombshell is the true story surrounding Fox & Friends co-host, Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) accusation and lawsuit in 2016 (that recent people!) against Roger Ailes for sexual harassment.
Rather than an expose style of film, director, Jay Roach uses an understated telling from the two protagonists, Gretchen Carlson and what really shocked the world, Fox News correspondent, Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron).
Gretchen and Megyn talk through the camera to the audience to feel their struggle, of whether it’s worth risking everything to stop the abuse.
Multiple women are shown in still-picture with their stories noted underneath, all with the similar tale of being asked to, ‘prove their loyalty’ to Roger (and friends) through-out their careers
We hear the thought going through the mind of Fox News correspondent Rudi Baktitar when propositioned back in 2006, where sleeping with the boss is expected to get a promotion, each thought heard before she carefully choses her response, to be kind, to say no, only to get fired.
This was the expectation. This is the revelation of the film.
The third yet fictional character, Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) is a representation of all those women put into an impossible situation of choosing between a dream career and humiliation, or losing that one chance at opportunity with dignity.
The drama of this unnerving story is in the performance – there’s nothing violent here. Just the destruction of being bullied by those not afraid to use their power, and the mentality that powerplay over others weaker is the normal way of things.
Nothing more needs to be said than seeing the fear in a woman’s eyes before a door is closed.
I’m not sure I can say this is an entertaining film, but Bombshell is a gripping story with a particularly impressive performance from Charlize Theron as her character struggles with the decision to stand up to a bully who has ultimately been the making of her career, or to stand and voice her story of sexual pressure and to help finally put a stop to the humiliation of other women.
Without having to be too tricky with the presentation, this is a linear telling of each milestone towards Gretchen’s ultimate success, each moment fought with every last bit of strength and determination because it’s enough.
Produced by: Sam Mendes, p.g.a., Pippa Harris, p.g.a., Jayne-Ann Tenggren, p.g.a., Callum McDougall, p.g.a., Brian Oliver
Executive Producers: Jeb Brody, Oleg Petrov, Ignacio Salazar-Simpson, Ricardo Marco Budé
Starring: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq with Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch.
A tense, end-of-seat drama about mateship and the moments in the machine of war that gives a solider back his humanity.
April 6, 1917 is when two young British soldiers, Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) are handed the task of saving sixteen-hundred lives.
Thinking the Germans have cut and run, Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) plans to give chase, to make a real difference in this bloody war, without realising the retreat is a trap – a strategy to lure the soldiers to certain death. One of those men, Blakes own brother.
This is a high-stakes drama that rides on the suspense rather than confronting with the gore of war. This is about mateship and family and the drive to help even when exhaustion is so deep you could drown just to rest.
1917 is a linear story that follows the conversation of the two mates as they take the task of the near impossible, across No Man’s Land, through the trenchers of the enemy, behind enemy lines, through a countryside not their own.
It’s a contrast of rotting dead bodies and wildflowers as we follow the young men, as they meet fellow soldiers on their mission, as they battle through traps and trip wires and giant rats.
The tension runs high because the film follows the story of the two soldiers closely so no one knows what comes next.
‘Sometimes, men just want to fight,’ warns General Erinmore (Colin Firth), the man sending them on their mission.
The only thing that matters is getting that message to Mackenzie.
A lot has to be said about the soundtrack here, a low vibrating drone creating that just below the surface feeling something bad is about to happen.
I jumped, that tension breaking with a shot or unexpected fall – you know that bad thing that happens. Not the super bad or expected, but the papercut or trip. That blip in life that catches you unaware. It’s kinda like that, but in a war, the consequences of a slip equals death.
I’m not a fan of war movies because it all gets a bit too real, too confronting. And there were moments here that stirred that anger. But this isn’t gory, it’s more about the suspense and characters, the young men fighting to make sense of where they are and where they’re being ordered to go. And making sense of it in the little things: giving a hand to get a truck out of a bog, to hand over a bottle to another because he knows he’s going to need it more. That’s how to make sense of it. By understanding the little things.
Is it the ‘Lady’s’ portrait that is on fire or does the title allude to a portrait of a ‘Lady’ who is on fire? Inscribed within the very title is a hint of the subtleties and ambiguities that characterise this deeply intimate romance, winner of the ‘Best Screenplay’ at the Cannes Film Festival.
And from this point on, the enigmas only proliferate.
In the opening scene, a hand clasping a stick of willow charcoal hesitantly traces a black line across the page while the model/tutor posing in front of the class instructs her students and, at the same time, indirectly urges the viewer to, ‘Take the time to look at me.’
Much in the way that an artist will strive to render three dimensional form on a two dimensional surface, noticing the minutiae of form and the way the model’s limbs and torso are affected by the quirks of perspective and the play of light, so too the viewer is invited into a more intense and quiet world where gesture and symbol take on a deeper meaning and sounds emerging from the stillness— waves slapping against a wooden hull, keys jangling, the scratch of charcoal on paper—take on their own musicality.
It is 1760 and Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is travelling to an isolated chateau perched atop a cliff on the Brittany coast to fulfil a commission. She is to paint a wedding portrait for Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), but the work must remain a secret. Her subject, freshly graduated from life in a convent, is clinging on to her first and last moments of freedom before she is offered up for marriage to an Italian nobleman she has yet to meet, and the only way for Héloïse to resist is to prevent her portrait from coming into existence.
While Héloïse has already forbidden one artist to continue painting her, she doesn’t suspect that her new companion may have her own agenda. Not only is Marianne compelled to work in the few moments of daylight she can snatch away from her time with Héloïse, she must also reassemble Héloïse in her memory from the fragmented glances she manages to steal as the two roam the grasslands surrounding the estate and the rugged shoreline below.
As she works at her task Marianne reflects, ‘One must study the ear, even if it is covered.’ With this observation, Marianne does not simply refer to the way that memory and imagination must work together to reconstruct that which is hidden, or the way the folds and whorls of the ear set up a visual rhythm that recalls its function, she also draws our attention to the ear as a motif, with its form a labyrinth at the entrance to a lightless tunnel.
Like the layers Marianne builds up on her canvas—from the initial cartoon marked out in charcoal, through the abstract daubs of paint where features roughly blocked in glow whitely against the raw umber imprimatura, to that moment when a likeness appears as if from a veil of smoke—that first guarded friendship between the artist and her subject forms its own layers, eventually building into a connection that will draw them both through an emotional and philosophical labyrinth to that lightless tunnel at its heart.
L S Lowry was a British artist (b. 1887, d. 1976) renowned for painting urban landscapes featuring textile mills, factory chimneys and other scenes from Pendlebury in Lancashire, where he lived and worked for more than 40 years.
The song, Pictures of Matchstick Men, by Status Quo (1968), refers to Lowry’s slightly abstract, impressionistic style of painting. Other than that reference, I wasn’t at all familiar with the artist or his work, so had no idea what ground the movie might cover.
From this perspective, the film engaged me and kept me wondering how it would end, although it was in no hurry to get there.
Rather than being an exploration of their entire lives, the film deals mainly with the years 1934 until 1939, when son Laurence Stephen Lowry (Timothy Spall) is his mother’s sole carer, while also holding down a full-time job as a rent collector, like his father before him, and painting in the attic studio most nights after she has retired to sleep.
The father died earlier and left them in debt, so their existence is restricted, although they can afford an unseen maid to do light cleaning.
Lowry is on the cusp of becoming known as an artist, so perhaps the choice of such a compressed timeframe helps show what he had to overcome in order to become recognised.
I wondered before I saw the film why it was called Mrs Lowry & Son, since the son was the one who became a famous artist. But after several minutes in her company it is clear that, despite being bedridden, the mother (Vanessa Redgrave) is the dominant person in the relationship, while his devotion to her is harder to fathom.
Perhaps by dealing with this small period in time the film depicted the essentials: his mother as the only person he really wanted to connect with, the frustration that she could not see what he could, but that he determined to balance his duty to her and his passion for painting as they were equally important.
According to biographical accounts, Lowry’s mother was controlling, couldn’t abide failure, and disliked living in an industrial, working class suburb, when she had been raised in elegance and luxury.
She considered her son’s choice of painting subjects to be ugly and a constant reminder of how far down they had fallen in society. It’s only when we see these two people in flashbacks, with her an elegant, straight-backed young woman skilfully playing the piano, or him as a young child in a sailor suit entranced to be in her company at the beach, that you can appreciate the dynamics that were established so long ago and are too entrenched now to be changed.
This filmed version of a play is very much stage-bound, and quite often stilted in the way it is photographed and acted. The only moments of lightness come from Lowry’s walks when he plays innocent games with the local children who delight in his company.
Both actors deliver their lines carefully and a bit woodenly, as though at a formal dinner party.
Not a lot happens for much of the time, just little scenes of him walking around town observing people and buildings, where he gets his inspiration, or at home upstairs in her bedroom, with her holding court from her bed while he balances his dinner on his lap, giving her updates on what is happening outside, or discussing their neighbours. But her constantly critical edicts on his lack of success, his wasted time painting, and her utter lack of appreciation for all his sacrifices to ensure she has a comfortable if slightly shabby home, food, company and safety, make her a very unlikable person.
One reviewer said she was right up there with monster mothers such as Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest or Piper Laurie in Carrie, and she is easily as awful as them, if not worse.
He tries to cheer her up and she says, ‘I haven’t been cheerful since 1898’.
It’s almost as though she enjoys being bitter and grumpy, and by constantly belittling her son ensures he’ll never have the confidence to leave her. This is especially evident when he receives an offer to show some of his work at a London gallery, and she manages to suck all the joy out of this prospect.
Apparently if she is unhappy, he must be so, too.
For a film depicting a struggling artist yearning to be recognised, not a lot of time is spent showing him painting in his attic studio or seeing more than just a few of his paintings from that period. This is frustrating if you want to see what he spends so many of his evenings immersing himself in, after he declares to his mother how his art is an obsession, how he sees beauty all around and must capture it somehow.
There are a few glimpses of his work, including the story behind the portrait of an unusual woman he saw on a bus, or a landscape featuring sailing boats, which turns out to be a treasured memory of a time he and his mother spent together at a beach during his childhood.
This is a very slowly paced film, in no hurry to get anywhere, and not given to deeper explorations of its characters’ motivations.
It will probably appeal more to an older audience accustomed to a slow burn rather than a bright rush. But I was engaged throughout, and inspired enough afterwards to research Lowry’s works, which I found fascinating in their deceptive simplicity.
Lowry once said that he was “a man who paints, nothing more, nothing less”, and this film doesn’t challenge that claim.
Produced by: Michele Bennett, Nash Edgerton, Danny Gabai
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Damon Herriman, Tom Budge, Benedict Hardie, Lucy Velik, Gillian Jones, Terry Norris, Brenda Palmer.
This strangely beautiful fairytale, horror story, social commentary is not an easy film to classify.
Behind the scenes, the director has breathed life into the puppets, allowing the drama of the Punch and Judy Show to play out beyond its predetermined conclusion.
Traditionally Punch batters a whole cast of characters. Often starting by mistreating his own baby, Punch’s other victims include Judy, a police constable, a skeleton, the devil and even a crocodile—with many of those hapless characters now populating the village of Seaside.
In the version of the show that has survived in England from the 17th century until the present day, Punch and Judy are glove puppets voiced by a single storyteller.
Dubbed the Professor, the puppeteer uses a device called a swazzle for the voice of Punch. Since the swazzle renders Punch almost unintelligible, he mutters away, his frustration and fury building, until he finally vents, paying out on anything in reach with his slapstick.
Even so, the film harks back to the earlier marionette theatre that made its way to England from Italy’s commedia dell’arte. The word slapstick in our modern language actually has its origins in the literal slap stick that Punchinello carried across from Europe, while the expression pleased as punch macabrely derives from Punch’s glee when he beats another character senseless and then proudly proclaims, ‘That’s the way to do it’.
As, Punch & Judy opens, it’s a moment where life imitates art imitating life. Professor Punch (Damon Herriman) and Judy (Mia Wasikowska) are taking a bow for their newly revived more punchy and more smashy show when the Professor apropos of nothing, casually flings Judy across the stage and into a wall.
In keeping with the English tradition where the crowd sides with Punch, shouting out warnings to him and revealing the hiding places of the other characters, the living puppets of Seaside have descended into a state of mob rule, with those who are weaker or different are scapegoated as witches.
In this world the voice of the accuser holds sway, while the rabble seizes upon the flimsiest of pretexts to displace their own depravity onto the those unable to defend themselves: ‘This one’s chickens all died on the one night, this one has a rash and that one was out staring at the moon for too long.’
As three women, ‘Fresh filthy examples of the evil sweeping our land,’ cower on the gallows for Stoning Day (a cunning inversion of Mother’s Day), I was struck by a frisson of recognition. The setting was one I’d roamed around in. I’d had picnics there. It wasn’t the English forest that I was seeing, but native Australian bushland.
It was a conundrum. Why set a quintessentially English story on the other side of the world? The film was so beautifully composed, so it didn’t seem accidental. Many of the scenes had been shot with specially-selected lenses from the 1960s and 70s, and some scenes had even been shot by candlelight as way to evoke the rich, dreamlike feel. When I thought about it, I wondered if, maybe, the film had been designed so we could see ourselves more clearly, while we believe that we were looking at them over there.
Script Written by: Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein and Gavin Hood
Based on the Book Written by, Marcia Mitchell and Thomas Mitchell: ‘The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion’
Produced by: Ged Doherty, Sarada McDermott
Starring: Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans, Adam Bakri, Ralph Fiennes, Conleth Hill.
Described as the untold true story of Katharine Gun, this is a film of a GCHQ translator and spy who took a stand against a war that, in the end, was never backed by any hard evidence.
I remember that first Iraqi war in 1991 – the green lights of warfare on the news like a computer game. And I remember watching the Twin Towers burn and the silence while watching with work colleagues. Jets flew over the city on that first day of the second invasion (2003). In Australia the war was felt. And fought. And protested against.
Yet, I can’t recall hearing about the leaked documents of Gun.
So the story here is gripping.
Weapons of Mass Destruction.
That was the line.
We went to war because of imminent threat.
Without hard evidence of this imminent threat, the declaration of war was needed to be pushed through the UN.
The Americans desperate to push the vote through send an email to the British GCHQ requesting agents to dig into the UN delegates to find information to turn votes in favour of going to war.
Concern about the legalities of the request, Katharine Gun investigates:
Who sent this email?
Who is Frank Koza?
And because MI6 don’t like the idea of this war;
And when journalist from The Observer, Martin Bright (Matt Smith) is told there won’t be a D-1 sanction against leaking the email;
Suddenly, who is Frank Koza? Becomes a someone.
Instead of the propaganda feed to the media, here, the film shows the other side, the attempt to stop the machine.
From the viewpoint of Gun (Keira Knightley), this is more a drama than spy thriller. This is the story about a relatable woman with no political ambitions or motivations, just an impulse to do the right thing, ‘Just because you’re the Prime Minister doesn’t mean you get to make up your own facts.’
I’m not always a fan of Knightley, but the weight of the film rests heavily on her ability to hold a relatable view of the injustice of what Gun sees is an illegal war pushed through by any means; to show and understand the impulse to do the right thing, to be a whistle blower, without coming across as being over-zealous.
And she’s great in this role: To make a stand, then realise what’s she done, to standing by her stance, Gun risks everything: her relationship with Kurdish husband, Yasar (Matthew Goode) seeking asylum, her job and her freedom.
It’s a cloak and dagger with a wry British humour. There’s the underground carpark scene, but really this is an exchange of information while playing tennis. This is a story from the newsroom and from the viewpoint of a woman trying to live an everyday life.
Who would have thought spell-check took part in allowing a war?!
But in the end, Gun’s continued freedom after admitting the leak speaks to the lengths of coverup and denial about the significance of unfounded evidence of imminent threat.
It is definitely worth a trip to Winsor for a coffee, a croissant and Camille Claudel.
As a part of their Isabelle Adjani retrospective, the 2019 Alliance Française Classic Film Festival is screening the 1988 classic, which tells the story of Camille Claudel’s tragic romance with the sculptor Auguste Rodin (Gérard Depardieu).
As the film opens, Camille Claudel is out late at night and all alone. The wind howls, snow is falling, and, despite her full-length skirt and bonnet, Claudel is burrowing into a muddy pit, pawing handfuls of wet clay into a suitcase.
What could possibly inspire such single-minded determination? An audition to work as an assistant to Rodin. Yes. Absolutely. But beyond that, Claudel’s aspirations were so improbable that a film about her life had to be based on a true story. Even at the dawn of modernism, Claudel’s chosen art form was unlikely.
Sculpture has always been hideously expensive and working at scale meant long hours of backbreaking toil in freezing barns and stables. Much to her mother’s (Madeleine Robinson) displeasure, Monsieur Claudel (Alain Cuny) shared his daughter’s ambition and was happy to indulge her. Although, in the end, her father’s indulgence may have turned out to be a poison chalice.
Taken on as one assistant among many, Claudel is working high on a scaffold when her attention is drawn toward a nook on the other side of the studio. From her unseen vantage point she can see Rodin running his lips over his model’s naked flesh. His reputation as a seducer of young women would appear to be well-deserved, until the sculptor later uses the same gesture on a marble torso as he tries to feel the life within.
While kissing the sculptures is generally discouraged in galleries and museums, hewing form from rock is intense and physical, and the film beautifully alludes to the sculptor’s desire to caress the rock, to sensuously experience that moment when the curve of ankle or the bow of a lip first emerges from its casing.
In the role of Claudel’s mentor, Rodin offers keen insights into the nature of sculpture and subtly evokes its poetry, ‘The accident of what is left is a complete emotion,’ but Rodin was years behind in fulfilling his commissions and struggling for inspiration when the affair began. As his muse, his model, his lover and his artistic collaborator, Claudel was the focus of Rodin’s admiration and her name was becoming established at the epicentre of Parisian art, so it must have seemed inconceivable that it would all come apart.
When the unthinkable did happen, Claudel denounced Rodin as the arch-villain who destroyed her. She blamed him for everything from stealing her commissions to undermining her reputation and blighting her exhibitions. She even claimed that Rodin was somehow responsible for the river Seine when her studio flooded.
But there was another less obvious figure involved in Claudel’s downfall. While Claudel was conducting her affairs in the limelight, her younger brother (Laurent Grévill) had been pursuing a successful diplomatic career and quietly gaining recognition as a poet. Ever available and obliging, Paul Claudel was Camille’s closest ally; that is, until he came into his inheritance.
A singular woman in a world conducted by men with agendas, the story of Camille Claudel might not be quite as it appears.
