There is no other actress on the planet like Juliette Binoche. For the latest proof watch Camille Claudel 1915. Most screen actors, even the very best ones, can never quite obliterate themselves from a performance. You know it’s Chiwetel Ejiofor or Cate Blanchett or Ralph Fiennes embodying the experiences of a character. It's somehow different with Binoche. Be they big or small, she lets feelings wash through her that seem to have nothing to do with the construct of performance.
There having been another film about Rodin’s mistress starring Isabelle Adjani, the title of Bruno Dumont’s film is punctilious. It could be even more specifc: it covers three days in which the lapsed sculptress, prey to paranoia and incarcerated by her family in an asylum in southern France, awaits the visit of her priggish brother Paul (Jean-Luc Vincent), whom she hopes will liberate her. The result is an unsparing portrait of a tormented artist caught in the eddies of despair and desolation.
The DVD release is as austere as the film itself, which has no music, only occasional dialogue between the silences and three lengthy monologues and for large sections may as well be in black and white. There are no extra baubles in which star or director explain themselves or talk about the remarkable performances of patients from an actual mental hospital. Instead you get Binoche’s face offering a harrowing window into the soul of a woman abandoned in hell.
