The film focuses on Camille's time spent in an asylum after she is sent there by her brother, the poet Paul Claudel, who questions his sister's sanity when she destroys some of her own works. She lives a reclusive life trying to prove to her doctor that she is mentally stable while waiting in hope that her brother will visit and consent to her discharge from the institution.
find out more...At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal is to take find out more...
Vincent Minelli directs this biopic that, unusually for Hollywood, doesn't subsume the subject's achievements in a fictionalised life-story, explaining one not in terms of the other, but fully celebrating both. Douglas is superb as the artist living on the edge. Not just for art aficionados.
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