"You must love me a little less or understand me a little better," Marguerite warns Armand when she has broken his heart the first time. Just as the beguiling but infidelitous Marguerite seems to be pulling a bait-and-switch on the gullible but not unworldly Armand - leading him on and cutting him loose again and again - so Metzger lures in the viewer with the promise of chic eroticism (couples cavort and conjoin in heterosexual and homosexual variations on inflatable couches and beds, their images refracted and multiplied in the reflective surfaces of mirrors and balloons, their infinite multiplicity at once exalting them and diminishing their humanity) only to thwart the expected payoff of voyeurism with a disarmingly passionate and heartbreaking story of doomed love. Winning the heart of the fickle Marguerite by giving her a reason to hope for something beyond immediate gratification, Armand then loses her through the interference of his well-meaning father (Massimo Serato). Convinced that the proof of her love for Armand lies in setting him free, Marguerite resorts to acts of cruelty that echo her first act indifference and push the narrative towards its tragic finish.
Having already shot films in Germany and France, Metzger gets excellent use out of his Roman locations (including the lush Villa Borghese) and a romantic sidebar in Monaco's Port d'Hercule, using Italian cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri (later behind the camera for Mauro Bolognini's 1981 La storia vera signora dalle camelie, starring Isabelle Huppert and Gian Marie Volonté) and benefiting immeasurably from a devastatingly haunting score by Piero Piccioni. Best known at the time for his immortal onscreen pairing with Catherine Deneuve in Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in 1964 and looking a bit like a dreamier Stephen Boyd, Nino Castelnuovo brings a persuasive sense of innocence to the role of Armand, presented as he is in counterpoint to the more brash and typically Roman wastrel Gaston (Roberto Bisacco, between roles in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet and Sergio Martini's Torso). An actor of limited emotional range, Castelnuovo is nonetheless a remarkably effective protagonist but if Camille 2000 can be said to belong to one person then it is the property of French actress Danièle Gaubert, whose pallid, womanly mien is the perfect embodiment of elusive happiness. Tragically, Gaubert (who later married Olympic skier Jean-Claude Killy) died young, of cancer, in 1987.
Tendered at the time as little more than sex exploitation, Camille 2000 has withstood the test of time to emerge as a bona fide classic of artful eroticism. Guilty at times of gross caricature (Metzger's depiction of male homosexuality and drug use is on par with Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In) but otherwise unexpectedly sensitive and heartfelt, the film has been available over the years in a variety of home entertainment formats, from lowly VHS to digital versatile disc. Last pressed to DVD in America in 2006, Cult Epics' new Camille 2000 DVD earns its place on the top shelf courtesy of a new director-approved "extended version" that adds another reel of material. The restored high definition transfer, letterboxed at 2.35:1 and anamorphically enhanced, plays fleetly even with the added material (which fleshes out some peripheral characters). Metzger joins art and film historian Michael Bowen for an informative audio commentary that could serve as a master class in filmmaking on the fly. The compliment of extras includes scenes deleted before the film's original release, a restoration demo and 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes home movie footage cobbled together as the featurette On the Set of Camille 2000, narrated by Radley Metzger.
by Richard Harland Smith
