Camille 2000

The main reason to watch Camille 2000, full disclosure here, is leading actress Danièle Gaubert, a successful model and one of the most beautiful women ever to appear in European cinema. She made about a dozen movies back in the sixties, and retired from acting in 1972 when she married skier Jean-Claude Killy. She falls somewhere between "Wow" and "Holy $#*%". There, I said it. Her astonishing looks make her a convincing figure as the beautiful muse-prostitute at the center of a decadent "scene", set in the future world of 2000, but she was also fairly experienced and accomplished as an actress by this time and had good chemistry with Nino Castelnuovo, who plays the naively romantic Armand. Although the year 2000 as viewed from the angle of the pop art late 60s is a bit laughable from this end, the central doomed romance at the heart of the story is still affecting to watch today, and the supporting performances, all of which blend a decadent insouciance with closet romanticism, flesh out the dramatic landscape nicely. Worth a watch.

I saw this flick due being released on the Arrow label. i do know that it was made i the roaring sixties, a time of drugs and free sex. And let this be a flick about forbidden romance.

They way it was shot I was rather surprised that some dare to call it soft erotic. Sure, there's a lot of making love going on but it's so tame for the time being shot. The girls are really lovely and all are voluptuous and that's what this all about, all showing their juggs on some LSD music. Let me say that the score is excellent but the erotic, well, for example, in the first love scene you can easily spot on the Blu ray release that the girl was wearing flesh coloured knickers not to reveal a thing. No pubic hair is ever shown. On the men site they show almost everything not intended but you know, you can't hide their testicles.

It's a classic for so many people and I can agree on many ways, the way the love scene's are shot with mirrors used that all looks fine but to say it's erotic, well, there are other flicks made back then showing more then Carmilla did. Just look at the orgy going on, a bit of master and slave but low on nudity. Go figure out that not one year later Mona was released, the first explicit flick without credits to start the golden age of porn.

A perfect example of the free sex era.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 2/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

Camille 2000, which could be called the first of the modern, adult films, was among those trendsetting, forward-looking pictures that marked the end of the 1960's. That said, it's not a fantastic film, but fairly well done. The pill popping, hard driving female of the film is asked, at the opening of the picture, whether she ever comes down. "Not if I can help it," she replies, tossing another handfull of drugs into her mouth. In a sense, that's the theme of the film; lurid and risque for the time, but somewhat tame compared to today's endless stream of mindless porn films.

OK, the pace is slow and the sex now looks tame, but Radley Metger's once-notorious Swinging Sixties update of the old romantic warhorse is worth sticking with - if only as a time-capsule of the decade that inspired it. The scene has shifted from Belle Epoque Paris to 'dolce vita' Rome, and the dying courtesan (Daniele Gaubert) is not a consumptive but a junkie. But she's still the 'Lady of the Camellias' - with flowers aplenty. Watch a vase of them zoom hilariously in and out of focus as her young lover (Nino Castelnuovo - whose career looked so promising in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg!) teaches her the true meaning of orgasm.

All jokes aside, this version is surprisingly close to the Alexandre Dumas fils novel, with its dark core of eroticism and death. Most of the sex takes place in Marguerite's stunning white boudoir - ceiling mirrors, chiffon drapes and invisible plastic chairs. At the film's end, our heroine is confined to an oxygen tent after her last fatal OD. Visually, the setting is more or less identical. Her on-and-off love affair with priggish young Armand reaches its 'climax' at an eye-popping S & M theme party. (Cue for aluminium Paco Rabanne dresses and copulation in a giant gold cage!) This slick Vogue-ish sadism is sleazy but not gratuitous: it mirrors the cruelty at the story's heart.

Sorry, I'm making all this sound like Art, which it's not. Metzger's direction is alternately stylish and ham-fisted, and as for the acting of Mlle. Gaubert...well, let's just say Garbo and Sarah Bernhardt can rest safely on their laurels. The supporting actors are the veritable cream of Eurotrash - Silvana Venturelli as scheming sex-pot Olympe, Roberto Bisacco as libertine Gaston, Eleonora Rossi-Drago as high-fashion procuress Prudence - but they have far too little to do. The real star of this film is set and costume designer Enrico Sabbatini. His work makes Austin Powers look like an exercise in restraint!

David Melville

I first heard about this film through its music. The late Piero Piccioni was one of Italy's finest composers from the hey day of Italian cinema in the 60's and 70's.

The write up for this movie descibes it solely in terms of sex and eroticism... but it so, so much more. It is like a wonderful painting depicting the heart wrenching trials and tribulations of two lovers, who spend a great deal of time hiding from the truth. Daniele Gaubert is superb in this, and you almost fall in love with her yourself (she, like her on screen persona, also had a tragic early death at the age of 44, from cancer). I am not a big fan of Metzger but this one is a must for all fans of lush 60's cinema.

It is how the 60's (the none 'Hippies' anyway) would like to be remembered.... ultra stylish, hedonisitic, with the heartache of love lost. (Let us pray Hollywood leaves this film be and not 'create' one of their awful remakes)