Camille 2000 Reviews

Radley Metzger, who hit it big in the late 1960s with a series of arty sex films, gives a futuristic treatment to Alexandre Dumas' novel The Lady of the Camelias, introducing a number of naked bodies into the proceedings. While this film was produced by an American company, it was shot in Rome with a European cast and crew and features typically lousy postdubbing. The buxom Daniele Gaubert plays Camille, a drug-addicted, incurably ill courtesan who sleeps her way into the heart of a local nobleman (Philippe Forquet), all the while longing for her true love, a lowly commoner (Nino Castelnuovo). Pretentious, overblown direction and generally awful performances detract from whatever eroticism could possibly develop from this mess. The best that can be said of the film is that the photography, art direction, and costumes are not unpleasant to look at. (In English.)