User reviews

The other comments I have read all seem accurate to me (except I don't think Maguerite is necessarily an aristocrat, but the poor protege of one). The innocent nudity, the gorgeous photography and glamorous Roman locations, the capturing of a moment of social freedom in the sixties, are all superb. Although the director has a reputation for making exploitation films, at least in the year 2000 it doesn't seem to me that this film qualifies as one, since the nudity, sex and drugs are relatively tame, and the film now reads as a serious dramatic effort, at least to me.

What I found fascinating about the film was the portrayal of the progress of the emotional relationship of Armand and Marguerite- it covers how they met, love won and lost several times, their emotional conflicts and life choices as a result of their feelings for each other. In this it seems to me highly realistic, perceptive and insightful. It captures the emotional life of the very wealthy, young and beautiful elite- joy, confusion, hedonism, love and also despair.

It follows the evolution of the relationship in such detail that, at times, I found the film dragging a bit, but this was a minor problem for me compared to the joy of seeing such a deep exploration of their relationship. Instead of the single roller-coaster ride of snipped-down Hollywood fare, we enter fully into another world by dwelling there through several different plot climaxes.

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

I'm glad I saw it. There are life lessons about love, sex, art, pleasure, honesty, and denial here. Radley Metzger at his best is a very honest and true-to-life filmmaker. Even when he's being surreal and throwing illusions at you like in "The Lickerish Quartet" he's being brutally honest and teaching you something about yourself and about life. Neither prudish, nor libertine, just honest, Metzger artistically explored the areas of life that other filmmakers either avoided or treated with juvenile snickering attitudes. Of course he was a businessman too and his choice of subject matter was no doubt shaped in part by what was commercially viable, but he was also a brave and dedicated craftsman who helps us still to understand and grow wiser. The emotional impact of this film is not unlike "Therese and Isabell", though the eye candy in this film makes it an easier viewing experience. Not all of Metzger's films hold up today, but this is one that does.

CAMILLE 2000

Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (Panavision)

Sound format: Mono

Whilst visiting Rome, an amorous nobleman (Nino Castelnuovo) falls in love with a beautiful young libertine (Daniele Gaubert), but their unlikely romance is opposed by Castelnuovo's wealthy father (Massimo Serato), and Fate deals a tragic blow...

A sexed-up love story for the swinging Sixties, adapted from a literary source (Alexandre Dumas' 'La Dame aux Camelias') by screenwriter Michael DeForrest, and directed with freewheeling flair by Radley Metzger who, along with the likes of Russ Meyer and Joe Sarno, is credited with redefining the parameters of 'Adult' cinema throughout the 1960's and 70's. Using the scope format for the last time in his career, Metzger's exploration of 'la dolce vita' is rich in visual excess (note the emphasis on reflective surfaces, for example), though the film's sexual candor seems alarmingly coy by modern standards. Production values are handsome throughout, and the performances are engaging and humane (Castelnuovo and Gaubert are particularly memorable), despite weak post-sync dubbing. Though set in an unspecified future, Enrico Sabbatini's wacked-out set designs locate the movie firmly within its period, and Piero Piccioni's 'wah-wah' music score has become something of a cult item amongst exploitation devotees. Ultimately, CAMILLE 2000 is an acquired taste, but fans of this director's elegant softcore erotica won't be disappointed. Next up for Metzger was THE LICKERISH QUARTET (1970), which many consider his best film.

Camille 2000 is about the a lady of a night as viewed through the eyes of her lover. She tries make things right for him BUT it ultimately lead to her downfall. Directed by Classic Golden Age Porno flick Director Radley Metzger, its schmancy soft-core porno that shows what would be the director's signature. A keen eye for details and framing, for what pretty much is a thankless production

That being said, the biggest downfall of Camille 2000 is that it is direction took for the vibe and acting. Of all his that I have watched, this is one of the least favored of his works. His (much better) works while hardcore in content, always had sophisticated yet well balanced approach to its material AND most importantly, grounded by actually well crafted stories and performances.

For this film, it has a mood that is all over the place AND acting that barely could lift the melodramatic AND stilted dialogue. Some of the scenes, especially the scandalous scene of sex and sodomy, had aged horribly. And this being an international production with audio added Post Production, the actor might not really have the best grasp of what the film really was about. The material really ate them alive. Especially for melodrama, as it is not as forgiving of a genre on its own.

Overall, very forgettable Metzger. His Classic Golden Age Porno films show him in his most uninhibited AND out and about. Try that.

While there are quite a few nude scenes, I'd rather think of Camille 2000 as a Drama than an Eroticfilm. The sex scenes a pretty tame compared with modern films, but much more elegant. The whole film is made in a beautiful style. The settings and costumes have this wonderful 60ies look. And not only the women are attractive, also the men are goodlooking. The story about a naive young man coming to the jet set of Rome and falling in love with the wrong girl may be not exactly new but hardly I have seen it better and more gripping. The actors are not that charismatic, but fitted almost perfectly in their roles. Highly recommended. Rating: 9/10.

Was there ever a worse filmic sub-genre than the late '60s, early '70s genre known as "art porn"? These were still dirty movies. They just made you wait 20-30 minutes in between the sex and nudity - and in the case of Radley Metzger, generally interposed something between you and the good bit, or focused the camera somewhere else. Wow. That's arty. "Man".

I guess the actual movie, or at least the "art" part, was whatever was going on during those long breaks in between sex scenes. What was going on in those scenes, you ask? Um, generally just rich people wandering around doing and saying nothing of interest.

I assume this is what made these movies "arty" - or what fooled audiences into thinking that that was what they were. You see, if something happens that has no apparent meaning or purpose... it must be art. At least, that is what you are supposed to think.

There are movies with excess sex and nudity that were nevertheless fantastic movies aside from, or despite, this content. Try "Turkish Delight", "In the Realm of the Senses", "The Dreamers", "Shortbus". I think in the '60s they hadn't yet realised how to pull off a serious movie with sex.

This one seemed to be "about" some rich kid from America who goes to Rome where he meets a bunch of rich types and goes to parties and whatever... but I think it was really about one of the women he meets, who has a few other guys circling around her. It's hard to tell. The focal point seems to be the environments, rather than the people in them.

The movie makes you wait almost half an hour before it shows you even one breast. Nothing happens in the meantime.

And it doesn't even give you a good look. I guess that's another arty affectation: if we don't properly SHOW the nudity, it must really be about something else, right? ...Right...?

The movie's first sex scene has the lady with some guy in a room full of mirrors. These mirrors actually prevent us from seeing what's going, but perhaps we're supposed to be impressed with Metzger being able to hide the camera. You have to admit that a straight-up porno movie probably wouldn't be able to conceal the camera in such a room. But then, they'd focus on the people in it, and thus probably wouldn't need to hide the camera...

Metger's chief method of hiding the dirty nature of his movie is to focus on something else while sex is supposed to be going on. In another scene, the camera focuses on a flower, going in and out of focus, while we hear some traditional female panting and moaning sounds.

When we finally get to a sex scene we can actually make out, we get what might be the next arty contrivance, and it's strange to behold... the couple don't move. Everybody knows that the only way to simulate sex is to fake thrusting along with the moans and gasps. The movie just shows two people lying on each other. It's weird. It's like they don't know how to do it properly. Maybe they saw a drawing of the missionary position in a book, and didn't realise that movement is also involved.

The scenes of drama and dialogue in this movie come to absolutely nothing. They are just wastes of time. The movie has no real story, nor any characters.

There is a climactic scene at a party-cum-orgy in which some people are shown to have sex while others wander around or stay still. AGAIN, you can barely make out any nudity, and the sex seems completely inert.

Unfortunately, Metzger did the same thing in "The Lickerish Quartet": he filmed actors and actresses poorly simulating sex, and didn't bother to give us a good look. This may have fooled late '60s audiences into thinking they were seeing something more sophisticated than your average porno flick. But I wonder if even they were fooled into thinking they'd seen a good movie?

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)

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

Radley Metzger is not to everybody's taste but this is less extravagant than others of his and avoids the most extreme excesses. Bringing the classic Dumas story up to date was a highly (over?) ambitious task, trying to project the characters and their interactions over such a time span, but it works remarkably well. The futuristic setting looks rather dated now, but it must have been quite convincing at the time as a portrayal of a fin-de-siècle jet-set world and does not adversely the main theme.

The chemistry between principals is almost tangible, and most of all the way their emotions are handled by the their eye-expressions in the "jail party" scene. Several supporting characters are outstanding - the malevolent Baron de Varville and the manipulative Olympe provide weight, while seemingly carefree Gaston provide much needed balance.

One trick I would have expected from Metzger given his penchant for bizarre symbolism was to have made the opening scene a production of "la Traviata". But he showed his true talent in the closing moments.

Best, Metzger remains true to the original story, modifying only as dictated by the modern context and making the translation with skill and sensitivity. From beneath the superficiality and cynicism, a deeply moving film emerges.

Metzger was a master at stretching a budget and providing nudie, erotic fair with dazzling production values. Remember that naked bodies were a pretty new commodity back in 1969 America and the eroticism that sizzles from the screen in this and other Metzger films comes from simply the idea that we are going to see people naked! And that usually means attractive females!! It is great to see something with such an innocent approach to titilation. Unlike many films and music videos today, where you just don't get to see much of anything, it delivers.

In addition, Metzger always toyed with kinky subject matter (check out "Lickerish Quartet") and that gave his films the edge over other American competitors. One of my favorite film-makers and very under rated. People who can't enjoy a Metzger film are generally too conservative in their tastes, ie "Titanic" = Best Picture.

Fiendishly fabulous, infamously inventive, and compellingly stylish, master movie eroticist, Radley Metzger's scintillatingly exotic, 'Camille 2000' - the 'now' child! Is a lushly provocative, wildly groovesome, deliciously decadent, handsomely hedonistic update of Alandre Dumas's 'La Dame aux Camelias'. This remains an engrossing, luxurious-looking, titty-twisted, doomed romance par excellence; part perky pop-art, modish 60s Italianate melodrama, part hyper-stylised, narcotically-laced sexcapades. Uncommonly beauteous to look at, Metzger's luridly hypnotic, kaleidoscopically cool drama about the tempestuous, in-out romance of jazzy jet-set lovelies, Marguerite Gautier (Daniele Gaubert) and, Armand Duval (Nino Castelnuovo) is sure to arouse more than your interest!

To paraphrase the 'Chicago Sun-Times' "Daniele Gaubert is presented in the nude", but enough of the broadsheets penetrating analysis, if Warhol had any tangible talent outside of a disquietingly luminescent paleness, he could only have dreamed of fashioning a far-out, polymorphously psychedelic perverse peep-show such as this! The silky lounge-a-delic score by soundtrack sophisticate, and all-round Euro-cult icon, Piero Piccioni is absolutely one of his finest sonic confections! It's rare to see such bravura sensual filmmaking artistry as Metzger's in full flamboyant flight, and, sweet baby Jesu!! What a vertiginous, voluptuously voyeuristic voyage into permissive pulchritude this is, and, before I go, did I mention the devastatingly delicious, Daniele Gaubert frequency gets her flouncy, avant stylish kit off? Aye! 'tis far more than mere mortal men deserve, mayte!

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.

Wow.. Sweet Jesus.

Last week i just discovered the psychedelic sound of tame impala and now i seen a picture like this. A blend of vintage- swinging-romance cinema with the setting of Last Year In Marienbad. Big thanks to "torrent" who seed me this love making film. The visual is 10, the story is 6, If this get a remake, the cast must be Camille Rowe with the soundtrack from Pulp, Boo Radley , and other Cafe Del Mar or Shibuyakei.

Last week i just discovered the psychedelic sound of tame impala and now i seen a picture like this. A blend of vintage- swinging-romance cinema with the setting of Last Year In Marienbad. Big thanks to "torrent" who seed me this love making film. The visual is 10, the story is 6, If this get a remake, the cast must be Camille Rowe with the soundtrack from Pulp, Boo Radley , and other Cafe Del Mar or Shibuyakei.

Last week i just discovered the psychedelic sound of tame impala and now i seen a picture like this. A blend of vintage- swinging-romance cinema with the setting of Last Year In Marienbad. Big thanks to "torrent" who seed me this love making film. The visual is 10, the story is 6, If this get a remake, the cast must be Camille Rowe with the soundtrack from Pulp, Boo Radley , and other Cafe Del Mar or Shibuyakei.

I saw this movie on television and from what I saw is was a huge orgy. There were a lot of love scenes and the movie really did not seem to tie it together. The love scenes were not needed in an otherwise good movie.