Formally rigorous and supremely controlled, this wonderfully designed and costumed biographical drama by the austere and provocative Dumont moves so slowly it can seem to be happening in real time.
In artistic terms, that makes it something of an achievement, but if you are not keenly interested in life in a French mental asylum in the early 20th century, you may find it drags a little (a little bit of watching a madwoman watch a pot boil goes a long way).
Binoche, who makes quite magnificent speeches in long, single takes, turns in work as good as anything she has done in the title role of a woman we would now diagnose with paranoid schizophrenia.
A noted sculptor and sometime lover of Auguste Rodin, she was confined to various institutions for the last 30 of her 80 years; this film, as its title suggests, looks at one of those 30, early in her internment.
It is based on medical records and correspondence, the latter plainly serving as the raw material for dialogue that often sounds forced and stilted.
