Camille Claudel 1915 (2013) isn’t remotely interested in the routine trajectory of biopics which take as their subject ‘the troubled artist’. It is a chamber piece drama about a brother and sister both inflicted with forms of insanity.

The latest picture to be released in the UK by Bruno Dumont stars Juliette Binoche in the role of Camille Claudel, whose tragic life in an asylum is as famous as her (surviving) sculptures. She has entered the popular imagination as a romantic figure whose genius was thwarted by mental illness, events conspiring against her and a domineering younger brother. A romantic portrait, however, is the last thing you’ll ever get from a director such as Dumont. Camille Claudel 1915 is the story of the artist as an abandoned person and the antithesis of the traditional melodramatic biopic.

The one scene in which the artist picks up a fistful of mud and begins to shape it with her hand is an inversion of those clichéd montage sequences in which the painter begins to paint an acclaimed masterpiece or the writer sits down at the desk bashing out the first lines of their greatest novel. After a momentary return to old pleasures, she becomes disgusted and throws the mud back onto the ground. Claudel destroyed many art pieces in fits of rage.

The director’s clever and unusual tactics are apparent from the start. The film opens with a shot of Camille’s head – the back of it. (Imagine a Hammershøi painting that swapped a middle class apartment for the asylum.) Her hair is tangled and unkempt and the clothes look like workhouse rags. The patient stands in a chilly stone-floor corridor, waiting for her turn to take a dip in the communal bath. There is nothing special about this woman, here in the hospital. She is just another patient standing in line, waiting for her turn to be bathed by the nurses.

In the next shot, Camille is stripped and placed in the tub and washed. The nurses comment on how dirty she is. Flesh can get mucky, but it can be cleansed. What about the soul? (Camille’s soul is of paramount concern for her brother, Paul.) The camera is focused on Camille’s intense displeasure. The scowl is hate-filled, but also profoundly sad. Actress Juliette Binoche was equally stripped of typical comforts: the script, makeup and the time to rehearse scenes. There would be no special treatment, either. In under a minute, within two shots, the entire tone is set for the rest of the film. Camille’s sorry world is presented as isolated, claustrophobic, humiliating and with no allowance for personal space or freedom.

Dumont used patients from a mental health hospital as extras and minor characters. Taking inspiration from Camille’s letters, we hear the former artist, several times in fact, refer to her fellow patients as ‘creatures’. The director’s inspired tactic – Dumont acquired their participation through an arts-therapy programme – puts the audience on the spot and is a clever route to empathising with Camille, who is nowhere near as ill as those around her and also a way to observe her snobbery. It’s all understandable, really. She didn’t belong at the austere environment of Montdeverges hospital, despite outbursts of paranoia and her conspiracy theories. The treatment by the family, who effectively disowned her, was brutal.

Like Tod Browning’s controversial 1932 picture, Freaks, Camille Claudel 1915 forces us to look at those we like to hide away. But faces are so vitally important in Dumont’s work. He often goes for non-professional performers and finds milling around his neck of the woods (the Pas de Calais region of northern France). The camera and Dumont’s conceptual principles transforms them into award-winning film stars. It’s not a new method at all, but it seems to irk some critics when these non-professionals bag coveted awards and it would terrify Hollywood to its core. Dumont gives us timeless faces – faces that could be found in a medieval painting or feel almost beatific in their intensity. Without the camera’s gaze and the framing, these are faces you’d pass by on the street and feel nothing for. Binoche is put through the same regime and it is a remarkable transformation and arguably the greatest performance of her career. She completely disappears into the role. The faces, too, in Camille Claudel 1915 bring to mind Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters. Funnily enough, potatoes are all that the residents of the hospital seem to eat.

The story takes place over three days, with Camille awaiting the visit of her brother. In thirty years locked away, he visited seven times. He is the celebrated writer and poet, Paul Claudel. This plot point, the arrival of Paul, is crucial for the third act switch. The narrative is pivotal, too, as it is set at a time when the patient held hope that she might be released from her ordeal at the asylum. Even the doctors argued that she really might best be served returning to her beloved Villeneuve and taken care of there. History tells us she never left the place, but during this time there was a feeling it might happen, even if Camille was uncertain and wavering. However, after five minutes in the company of Mr. Claudel, you’ll understand Camille’s fate is sealed.

For about an hour, we spend every scene with Camille. Nothing much happens. One of the main criticisms aimed at the film is the cut away from the asylum to Paul making his way there. If anything, Dumont throws us from one horrific situation to an even more intense one: it’s both a recontextualisation of the film’s premise and a brief examination of the spiritual beliefs of an equally crazy man.

Although the film’s title is focused on Camille, the brother’s decisions controlled her destiny and we have to have an inkling why he would refuse access to the family and a life outside. Paul’s thinking was plainly of its time: sexist, patriarchal, socially embarrassed, uneducated about psychiatry and that being sent away was for the best. Yet there is no argument that he loved his sister and respected her as an artist. Paul’s own madness was not showy or demonstrated by panics or smashing up pieces of art. It’s as if he could handle the intensity of his communication with God but that he saw poor Camille as tormented and weak. The path to God could not be reached.

Paul worked professionally as diplomat and is affirmed as one of greatest, if controversial, French poets of the 20th century. Dumont has called him a genius equal to his sister. Deeply influenced by Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud’s rejection of materialism and striving to find a deeper meaning and order to the chaotic world, which was then in the early years of a world war, like others poets and writers such as W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot and Graham Greene, he found succour in Catholicism.

In one scene, Paul talks to a priest about Camille being possessed (possession was also a theme in Dumont’s Hors Satan, 2009) and may have believed her time in the asylum would cleanse her soul. If she was never to leave, well, she would get into heaven, for sure. Paul, in essence, is very much like Dumont’s teenage weirdo, Hadewijch. He is searching for absolute answers and wants to feel the divine. Can we say, therefore, that Hadewijch (2009, Hors Satan (2011) and Camille Claudel 1915 form a loose trilogy? The films are invested with characters either desiring and exhibiting a connection to high powers. In the latter two films, possession (as in demonic or spiritual corruption) is a thematic thread.

To highlight this notion of religious intoxication and the disconnect that Paul and his sister, Dumont shows his praying to God as seriously, even comically, intense. When we see Camille kneeling on a pew in the hospital chapel, it looks somehow less sincere. She’s crouched muttering like, well, a sad and desperate person. Paul has convinced himself of a direct connection to God. It is clear that he’s got the spirit and can handle such divine blessings, whereas, his sister cannot. This is the heart of the tragedy and the false premise Paul invested in so heavily.

Camille died in 1943, aged 78, and was buried in an unmarked grave. Nobody from the family attended the funeral. The Claudels left to history their art and a fascinating sibling relationship from which Bruno Dumont was able to craft his latest cinematic marvel.

Camille Claudel 1915 is out now in select UK cinemas

This year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema pays tribute to a legend of French Cinema, Alain Resnais, bringing a restored version of his 1959 New Wave classic Hiroshima mon amour (starring Emmanuelle Riva) and many other delights to a whole bunch of lovely cinemas in the UK between 23 and 30 April.

The tribute will also feature Resnais’ last film before his death, Life of Riley, which is an adaptation of playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s work.

Those two films are definitely on our list of must-sees but we’ve also noticed three other titles that we think you might want to cast an eye over;

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet – in English – 105 minutes                                         (L’Extravagant voyage du jeune et prodigieux T.S. Spivet)

Amelie director Jeanne-Pierre Jeunet’s adaptation of Reif Larson’s popular novel, starring Helena Bonham Carter, follows the exploits of precocious ten year old Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet who seems to have a lot in common with a certain pernickety character from TV’s The Big Bang Theory. He sets off for Washington alone to go and compare his research with that of the top scientists but uncovers some unresolvable life mysteries. Wonder what the neighbour kids will think of that.

9 Month Stretch – French with subtitles – 82 minutes                                                                (9 mois ferme)

Pregnancy black comedy. A judge suddenly finds that she is in the family way but the baby’s daddy happens to be banged up for a stretch in prison and she has no memory of having met him. Awkward.

Quai D’Orsay – French with subtitles – 113 minutes

Is this French The Thick of It? Quai D’Orsay is another adaptation, this time of a hit graphic novel on French Foreign Minister (later prime minister) Dominique de Villepin. Starring Thierry Lhermitte as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Raphael Personnaz as his new speechwriter.

Hiroshima mon amour – French with subtitles – b&w – 92 minutes

Resnais’ multi-award winning 1959 film set in postwar Hiroshima, where a Japanese architect and a French actress embark upon an intense affair in intense circumstances.

Life of Riley – French with subtitles – 108 minutes                                                                         (Aimer, boire et chanter)

UK premiere on 26 April at Cine Lumiere. The absent George Riley is dying and we don’t know much about him but we do know how he affects the lives of quite a few other people. Suburban drama on a stage.

Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2014 takes place between 23 and 30 April, visiting London, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Canterbury, Nottingham and Oxford. Details of where and when.

We have one last video treat for you regarding Film4 FrightFest 2013. Click on the video below to find out what Gareth Evans has to say about The Raid 3 and what’s next for Hatchet writer / producer Adam Green.

For more New Empress coverage of Film4 FrightFest 2013 click on the links: FrightFest Video Blog #1,   FrightFest 2013 Review Round-up Part 1   and  FrightFest 2013 Review Round-up Part 2 . You can also watch a video interview with FrightFest co-founder Alan Jones and  read full-length reviews of  Big Bad Wolves ,  We Are What We Are   and  Haunter   by clicking on the highlighted links.

For those in a post-FrightFest funk, we can bring to you the first of two video blogs we made over the course of the festival. We interviewed various talented movie folk on the media wall and got to ask them all sorts of questions.

For more New Empress coverage of Film4 FrightFest 2013 click on the links: FrightFest 2013 Review Round-up Part 1 and FrightFest 2013 Review Round-up Part 2. You can also read full-length reviews of Big Bad Wolves, We Are What We Are and Haunter by clicking on the highlighted links.

The Film4 FrightFest kicks off at the end of this week and consequently we caught up with the co-founder and director of FrightFest, Alan Jones. Organising and coordinating such an event is no easy task and in our latest video blog, Jones talks openly about how he has worked hard to make this the strongest and most diverse line-up to-date.

He further offers personal insight into the films that have been selected.

For more information and for tickets for FrightFest 2013 please click here

The latest New Empress Magazine video blog raises questions about the impact of censorship and classification on the action genre. Although many might argue that the introduction of the 12A has meant decline and dilution for the action genre, this issue isn’t as recent as some believe. Furthermore, the 12A doesn’t necessarily mean that all action films are being dumbed down; there are releases in the last year which rebel against this idea. Click below to watch the latest video blog and find out more.

To read more about violence in the 12A movie-verse click here.

As Oz the Great and Powerful is released to DVD and Blu-ray this week our Editor in Chief has a few issues to iron out with Glinda – the Bitch of the North. 

I’ve always been deeply suspicious of Glinda from the Wizard of Oz (1939). In fact, that’s an understatement. She has always seemed, to me, the equivalent of a catty girl friend who smiles and says: “you look pretty” when in reality you have unwittingly smudged lipstick on your teeth. She wouldn’t tell you about a ladder in your tights either. She’s a manipulator; a schemer – she’s the kind of person Louise Redknapp was singing about in her hit song: 2 Faced. And I can prove it.

In his BFI Film Classics volume on The Wizard of Oz, Salman Rushdie asks a pertinent question: “Of the two witches, good and bad, can there be anyone who’d choose to spend 5 minutes with Glinda?” He references her overly-powdered face, her “smile that seems to have jammed” and asserts that she is a “trilling pain in the neck.” Furthermore, Rushdie claims that she belittles women who are less conventionally beautiful than she: “only bad witches are ugly” whilst the Wicked Witch is off avenging the death of her sister, showing a close kinship with her family and fellow womenfolk. Although I agree with everything Rushdie has to say in his work, being grating and a little bit shallow are the least of Glinda’s problems. For a start, she doesn’t fight her own battles.

When Dorothy crash lands on the Wicked Witch of the East, undeniably committing manslaughter but apparently that’s okay because it was a witch, Glinda makes Dorothy an instant enemy of the Wicked Witch by magicking the ruby slippers on to her feet. Now, as well as accidentally killing the sister of the sole surviving bad witch she’s also forced to clomp about in the dead woman’s shoes – that wouldn’t go down well with anyone, let alone a wicked witch. Those shoes are Westie’s rightful inheritance and Dorothy is getting yellow brick dust all over them. Glinda could have teleported the shoes onto her own feet but instead she decided to let Dorothy take the fall, a move which ultimately leads to Dorothy’s life being endangered and to her murdering in cold blood. Or cold tap water if you’re of a literal mindset. Thanks a lot Glinda.

Perhaps Glinda’s cowardice would be forgivable, Margaret Hamilton is pretty scary, if she didn’t then send Dorothy off on a completely unnecessary wild goose chase to the wizard when, apparently, she had the power to go back home to Kansas all along. Don’t forget that Dorothy is, at this time, deeply concerned about the impact of her absence on Auntie Em and Uncle Henry after Professor Marvel’s well-meaning but deeply deceptive vision (the main moral of The Wizard of Oz is that grown ups are useless liars by the way – especially men). She wants to get home as quickly as possible to reassure her guardians of her safety but Glinda has other ideas and decides a scenic trip to the Emerald City is a much better idea. She conveniently forgets to mention the poisonous poppy fields, the fire-ball throwing witches, the winged monkeys and, perhaps most importantly given that Dorothy wants to see the wizard, that the wizard doesn’t accept visitors.

Again, all this could have been explained away if Glinda  at the end of the story had, for once in her life, been up front about her motives. “I could see you were the only one who could defeat the Witch of the East” she could have said “and so I used the promise of going home to motivate you.” Or even: “You clearly come from a small town and I thought that the journey on the yellow brick road would teach you some valuable life lessons and help you grow as a person.” When the Scarecrow, quite rightly, probes her over why she didn’t tell Dorothy she had the power to go home all along however, Glinda simply replies: “Because she wouldn’t have believed me.” Er. Hang about there Powderella. When crash-landing in an unfamiliar environment is it not logical to take directions from knowledgeable locals? I’m pretty sure if you’d said to Dorothy: “Just click those magic slippers 3 times and think of home” she’d have been naive and desperate enough to do it. You had other designs on her naivity though, didn’t you Glinda? You basically wanted her to carry out an assassination that seemingly leaves you as the only important political figure in the land of Oz (save the Wizard who you knew was useless anyway and thus easy to overthrow for yourself). You used Dorothy to become a tyrannical dictator. Admit it!

Given the existence of the musical Wicked, and what Rushdie and other writers have contributed to this line of thought, it’s evident that I’m not the first person to feel this way towards the Powdered One. The release of the prequel film has, however, made hating Glinda even easier. Michelle Williams is beautiful in this film; that’s not up for debate – she’s wears an awesome tiara and there’s not a powder compact in sight – but Glinda’s early character arch makes the actions of Billie Burke’s Glinda in the 1939 film all the more sinister.

Before the release of Oz the Great and Powerful, we could have at least tried to convince ourselves that Glinda, just like all the other residents in Oz, didn’t know what an utter fraud the wizard really was. We wouldn’t have really bought it, but it was an option for us. Now we know that in her youth she not only discovered that Oz was bluffing all along, but that she actively encouraged him to deceive the whole kingdom in order to gain control over its riches and military power. Clearly, this was all part of her  master plan to eventually seize control for herself, she even uses her sexual power over him to seal the deal. Well, alright they only kiss.  But I’m pretty sure it’s a kiss symbolising something a bit more risque that you can’t really put into a 12A film. Step 1 of plan to take over the world: get boyfriend to manipulate his way onto the throne of Oz. Check!

To conclude, before this becomes a thesis-length rant rather than a ruthlessly-delivered piece of editorial, perhaps the most unnerving thing about Glinda, and in a way the wizard, is that her deception is covert. She hides behind a sacharine smile and a glittery headdress that any impressionable mind would associate with the powers of good. The Wicked Witches may be corrupt and hell-bent on obtaining power and riches, but at least they’re up front about it; you know exactly where you stand with them. Glinda on the other hand is the Judas of Oz; the Cypher; the Elsa Schneider and nothing good lies ahead in the future of such snakes. Lando Calrissian may have redeemed himself in Jedi but rather than see Glinda’s sly streak explained in some Hallmark happy ending it’d be much more satisfying to see a sequel in which she gets her comeuppance. Do they have Sarlacc pits in Oz?

You can read more columns from the Empress in our print editions.

Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing is finally here! In the latest New Empress Magazine Video Blog Mark Searby and editor Helen Cox discuss adapting the bard for the big screen. They also decide, once and for all, which is better: the book or the film…if only they could agree.

Click here to view more New Empress Magazine Video Blogs

Issue 10 is now available to order.  As our magazines sell out within weeks of going on sale we recommend ordering to avoid disappointment. Our theme this issue is Time in Film and consequently you’ll be able to read up on how plausible film time travel techniques actually are, the role of stopped clocks in the movies, what Virginia Woolf thought of cinema in the 1920s and enjoy a special section that looks decade by decade at 20th Century Cinema – from its silent origins to its blockbusting finale.

Alongside our time-related features you’ll also find a smattering of topical articles including a 2-page preview outlining the must-watch films this summer, some musings on potential story lines for Jurassic Park IV, interviews with independent filmmakers, reports from special film events and our very own tribute to the seemingly untouchable Benedict Cumberbatch. All this and words from all our regular columnists that you know and love.

Issue 10 will be shipped to subscribers and buyers on 20th June 2013.

Click here to order issue 10

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I recently spent a good three hours sobbing my heart out in the darkest corner of New Empress HQ; clutching my John McClane action figure like it was the last thing I had in the world. Why? I’d just received the news that A Good Day to Die Hard had been granted a 12A certificate. You see, I’m an old fashioned kinda gal; I like my heroes to sweat and bleed and swear, uncensored. Die Hard Mother Fudger just doesn’t have the same ring.

Those who have seen Die Hard 5 may argue that the film’s classification is the least of its problems, and that’s a fair cop, but it is also possible that the 12A certificate is at the root of some of its issues. Did the first Die Hard really have that much of an original storyline? Nope. But the smart-talking script, complete with appropriate swear words and snappy, unabashed dialogue, covered up the cracks in Alan Rickman’s accent and established John McClane as a watchable hero. That and the fact that John at one point jumps from an exploding skyscraper attached only to a fire hose.

The original John McClane was a tangible, fallible idol. When he walked across shattered glass barefoot (he had his reasons), he bled. When he crawled, inch by inch, through claustrophobic ventilation shafts, he perspired. When he made the mistakes anyone else would have made in the same situation, but he should know better because he’s a member of the NYPD,  he called himself an asshole. Because that’s real; because that’s honest.

Thanks to the new kids on the block at 20th Century Fox, John is no longer a man you can touch and smell. He’s an airbrushed fantasy with perfect muscles, able to endure any amount of beating; any number of gunshot wounds and emerge with nought more than a scratch on his forehead. He’s a superman, not an everyman meaning he’s not as relatable. Not as interesting. Not as funny. He’s not drawn that way.

Sad as this is for fans of the original Die Hard films, there are, potentially, bigger concerns about the 12A certificate. Yes. I know it’s difficult to imagine anything more important than the integrity of John McClane but I’ve read some books and looked at some charts and I’m fairly convinced my next point falls into that category: in the 12A movie-verse there are no repercussions  Bullets fly, beatings are issued, necks are snapped but there is no blood to show for it. No corpses; no broken bones; no consequences.

Jack Reacher, rated 12A, opens with a particularly chilling sequence in which a murderer snipers down several people, including a little girl in the arms of her nanny. We see the gun firing, it is clear that the people are dead but we never see them die. According to an article on Digital Spy at the time of release, the producers cut two seconds in order to secure the 12A rating. Two seconds is the difference between a film that could unnerve young and vulnerable viewers and a film that couldn’t. Similarly The Dark Knight Rises shows Bane snapping necks, but cuts away before the consequence. It’s not that there aren’t any forthright 12A films at all (The Hunger Games stands out as one of the more daring examples) but on the whole a 12A certificate tends to be code for big studios sanitising startling subject matter.

Some readers may think this is just fine. These films are going to be watched by bairns, of course they can’t portray graphic violence. That would be wrong. And immoral. And irresponsible. While it’s understandable that people feel this way  it seems that everybody is so concerned about what will happen if people are exposed to media violence they haven’t given any thought to what happens if you edit it out.  Will sheltered young people eventually be in a position where they don’t understand the bloody fallout of violent actions? It seems implausible on the surface and yet most of us have seen documentaries showing the impact of internet pornography on how young people perceive their own bodies and the nature of sexual intercourse. It’s not necessarily behaviour that is affected, but perception of key social frameworks. Is this potentially more damaging to young and vulnerable minds than the depiction of realistic violence? Only time will tell but it makes me uncomfortable that studios are effectively turning bigger profits by making violence more child-friendly.

Why are so many films aiming for the 12A certificate? As Maryann O’Connor reported in our 2012 Film Year Book the answer is, very simply, to make more money. The wider accessibility of a film, particularly to a teenage audience with plenty of expendable income, makes it more likely that the studio fat cats will gross dollar one. How they are achieving it is a more complicated issue and brings us back to the original travesty of the 12A classification of a Die Hard film.

In his recent video ‘A Bad Day for Die Hard?’ critic Mark Kermode details the notes from the BBFC website stating that the producers of A Good Day to Die Hard showed the film to the BBFC in an ‘unfinished form’. The BBFC advised that it would receive a 15 certificate but that the “preferred 12A certificate could be achieved by making a number of cuts to both language and visuals.” Shortly after the BBFC declared Die Hard 5 had been “passed uncut” and classified 12A and this is the version that was released theatrically. As Kermode rightly points out the film was not censored by the BBFC, they would happily have dished out a 15 certificate for the film that was shown to them. The company that made it, however, decided to censor their own work in order to procure the pre-teen pound.

Going beyond our responsibility to young people and making sure they’re kept safe from images that might disturb them this process raises questions surrounding both the integrity of the industry and its artistry. Was the film really ‘unfinished’? Unlikely. More likely is that they had the film they wanted to release but needed to test whether it would reach their market. Kermode predicts that the 15 rated version of A Good Day to Die Hard will reach audiences via DVD, just as the extended cut of Taken 2 did, and he’s probably right. With this in mind, is it that likely that it was ‘unfinished’ or were Fox simply looking at means of making more money? Whatever the answer to this question Kermode finishes with a very important point: this is the future of filmmaking; studios trimming their own work to maximise money-making potential.

This begs the question: will directors and scriptwriters ever again see their visions truly realised on the big screen? Will audiences start to see cinema as a medium that does not present the ‘real version’ of a film but instead something that has been tampered with to keep it more politically correct? Is cinema going to seem like a place where we go to be babied, the only true independence to be found in home entertainment? Why would you, after all, go to the cinema to watch wishy-washy tripe that doesn’t reflect the true tone of a film?

Unless studios want to see the theatrical model fall to pieces, and we don’t know for sure how much value they place on cinemas now, they should reconsider their constant gunning for the 12A.  And, perhaps, the BBFC should consider carefully whether or not it is appropriate for a studio to come to them for this kind of advice. Both are playing a part in this new process that, seemingly, deems the adult picturegoer practically worthless. These are the people making the sacrifice; suffering through low quality imitations of franchise films that once meant something to them. Furthermore, the current approach implies, in a manner that is almost insulting to our intelligence, that kids can’t get hold of the uncut versions of these films easily enough anyway. Back in the 1980s many young people got hold of ‘video nasties’ even though they were banned and they didn’t even have the internet. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the current theatrical model is unlikely to protect anyone in the long run.

The BBFC are currently holding a public consultation. Complete the online survey here and tell them your views.

To view Mark Kermode’s video in full click here.

More columns from The Empress can be read in our latest print issue and at lostinthemultiplex.com