I still need to mention this one film, Camille Claudel 1915, that I saw at the Helsinki International Film Festival, because I happened to visit a little exhibition of Camille Claudel at the Musée Rodin in Paris by coincidence a week later.
Jeune fille à la gerbe, by Camille Claudel. Photo from the website of Musée Rodin.
Camille Claudel was first Rodin's student and later his lover. It didn't end up well as we learn from the film. Claudel ends up in a mental institution where she spends the rest of her life, though she obviously doesn't belong there.
Juliette Binoche played Claudel in the film and she was absolutely fantastic in the role. In her face, you can feel Claudel's dolour, despair and hope. Not much is happening in the film, but the intensity of Binoche's presence is outstanding. The use of actual mentally handicapped people in the casting was courageous, but as it turned out, the best possible solution. I can't understand how the people next to me in the theater could have been eating popcorn - constantly, during the entirety of the film - while watching a film as agonizing as this (who invented the combination of popcorn and cinema in general? Argh!).
At the Musée Rodin, which is by the way a very comfortable museum to visit, I wasn't very impressed by Claudel's works (above one of them). But I really like this one sculpture by Rodin: Voix intérieure ou la méditation.
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