This biopic of the influential French sculptor focuses on his sexual and professional exploitation of his brilliant young student and model Camille Claudel, who lived in Rodin’s shadow long after their affair had ended and who spent her last 30 years confined to an insane asylum. Her story has become a feminist parable of sorts, dramatized onstage and onscreen, but writer-director Jacques Doillon (Ponette) is less concerned with her victimization than with the thinking behind Rodin’s work and the artistic significance of the lovers’ feverish sex life: scenes of them rolling around in the sheets, a tangle of arms and legs, provide a real-world corollary for their careful study of the human form in the studio sequences. Claudel (Izïa Higelin) may be a tigress in bed, but nothing about her excites Rodin (Vincent Lindon of The Measure of a Man) more than her insight into his unfinished sculptures. In French with subtitles.
Rodin
1 hour 59 min • 2017
