Lorna Irvine is moved by Juliette Binoche's latest performance.
Juliette Binoche is one of Europe's finest leading ladies with a string of brilliant intense performances throughout her career: from Michele, a woman with a degenerative eye condition on the run in Leos Carax' 1991 classic Les Amants du Pont Neuf to her powerhouse roles as Julie in Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1993 award-winning Trois Couleurs: Bleu and Anne in Michael Haneke's 2005 thriller Cache.
Now, her latest woman at breaking point is the titular artist in Bruno Dumont's new film. Claudel, the real life muse to sculptor Auguste Rodin (who was over twenty years her senior) was driven into a paranoid state by his treatment of her, in ensuring her own artistic work was suppressed, manipulating her and forcing her to have abortions throughout their twenty year relationship.
Dumont's sparse study is done almost in real time and is effective in using naturalistic sound: of eating, birdsong, buzzing bees, wind and the agitated cries of the residents. The long, lingering shots are often reminiscent of Pasolini's Theorem with a palette of grey, blue and chalk white. The camera focuses in uncomfortable close-up on Binoche's fretful face and hands, always working whether folded in prayer or hopelessly trying to sculpt.
The nuns, who run the asylum in Avignon where she now resides, follow her every move like shadows of death in their long black robes, and Claudel, alert and vulnerable, is unable to weep alone. Inmates too, watch her. Almost indistinguishable from some patients, some of the staff put her in charge of the less capable women. It is a system which is failing, unable to sustain erratic behaviour and good alike- clear that she is possibly not mentally ill but being driven so in their care. Her only solace is in religion, and she feels free sitting whispering prayers and passages in the chapel.
One scene is simultaneously hilarious and awful, where Claudel watches a rehearsal of the asylum's production of Don Juan. As the 'actors' stumble again and again over their lines, she laughs at this entirely ridiculous scenario yet hears a resonance in the cruelty and philandering and starts to break down. The inmates are being insulted and she is powerless to intervene.
Only one character seems poorly drawn: Paul, Claudel's pious brother. Although Jean-Luc Vincent's portrayal is excellent, he seems shoe-horned in an attempt to contextualise his sister's suffering. His judgement and mannerisms seem morally heavy-handed, his appearance all too brief and he adds little to the film.
Nonetheless, the film as a whole is beautiful and the final frame heart-breaking, Claudel wearing the placid smile of a deluded woman who will never escape the confines of the institution but believes she will: just another pathetic victim of the patriarchy.
Screened at the GFT as part of 2013's French Film festival.
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