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Camille
National Entertainment Media // Unrated // September 15, 2009 // Region 0
List Price: $24.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Till
death do us part" isn't a vow; it's wishful thinking. See, Silas (James Franco) can't stomach the giddy, yammering, Southern-fried chatterbox he's about to marry, but Camille (Sienna Miller) is the sheriff's niece, and that marriage certificate is pretty much a "get out of jail free" card for this serial screw-up. Camille's bursting at the seams, though -- so smitten with her life-long crush that she bought her own ring, even -- and even though she gets that the feeling's not exactly mutual, she figures Silas still might fall for her at some point down the road anyway. I mean, they're honeymooning at Niagara Falls! That's what lovers do, right? Silas is on parole and isn't supposed to hop over state lines, but Uncle The Sheriff (Scott Glenn) is enough of a pushover that he goes ahead and looks the other way.
Oops. After a nasty spat at some random greasy spoon and a wedding ring clinks through some motorcycle gears and onto the blacktop, crash, splat, fizz fizz. Silas walks it off with nothing more than a scratch and a bloody tux to show for it, but Camille's lifeless ragdoll of a body is all twisted and contorted. Si barges into a house down the road to call 911, but he opts against it when he realizes that'd toss him back in the clink. When he stomps his way back, though, Camille's corpse is gone. Turns out she's down by the river washing up. Her neck's sore, but otherwise...? Everything seems five-by-five. Camille and her newly-minted hubby catch a ride north, but as they think they're trotting to their honeymoon, the cops are convinced Silas is on the run for robbery and murder. They've got part of it right. I mean, Camille is dead: she just doesn't know it yet. Yup, it's a post-mortem romance, with Silas starting to fall for his dearlybeloveddeparted, even swiping a couple barrel drums of formaldehyde to mask the stench of her rotting flesh. So...yeah, Camille is a love story. With a zombie.
When I
first read the TV Guide capsule-style summary of Camille, I was kind of picturing a romantic comedy version of that Tales from the Crypt episode where "I want her to love me forever!" keeps going even with exposed bones, tattered, rotted flesh...that whole thing. Turns out Camille isn't that cacklingly dark a comedy. Okay, she loses her hair and has started to reek, but the timeline's too compressed for Camille to really start falling apart. She's never not adorable, at least if you can get past the double-digit-IQ-Southern-drawl that Sienna Miller is belting out here. The darkest Camille gets with its stabs at comedy are d'oh-I-guess-I-was-shot, finger-down-the-drain, and an airbrushed tan. I think a dark, depraved sense of humor probably would've worked a couple dozen times better than what Camille does churn out, though. Its sense of humor either skews weakly-Soccer-mom -- like a rookie cop who shrieks after hearing the corpse on the gurney sneeze -- or confuses oddball-quirk for comedy. Camille doesn't introduce bizarre concepts and then milk humor out of them: it just trots out something like Cowboy Bob (::sniffles!:: David Carradine) and his stable of airbrushed-pastel horses and leaves it at that. Hey! Look! That horsey's painted powder blue! Horseys aren't supposed to be blue!!!!! Camille too frequently feels like "okay, a priest, a sun-dried tomato, and the bassist from Frankie Goes to Hollywood walk into a bar. The end." -- a joke that cuts off halfway through what could've been a great setup without bothering to finish with a punchline. You call it a fantasy, and I scowl and shake my head. So, the "comedy" half of the "romantic comedy" equation flops and flounders. How 'bout the "romantic" part? Nah. Even with a movie whose title character is rotting away, the execution of the drama still feels pretty routine. There's one indescribably sweet moment near the climax that hit me like a slug in the gut, but otherwise, the budding romance feels too heavy-handed and schmaltzy. It has its heart in the right place, sure, but this isn't some 3rd-grade-o-lympics where everyone gets a "Good Try!" ribbon.
When I was in junior high, there was a guy who'd put a plastic chair on his head and make space noises. Weird...? Sure. Funny...? No. Would I want to subject myself to that for an hour and a half straight...? Pass. That's kind of what Camille is like. It tries to subvert a standard issue romantic comedy premise by being finger-wagglingly-strange, but "strange" is where it stops. I like the skeleton of its plot, although Camille doesn't go far enough with it. I can't pass up a flick with Sienna Miller, James Franco, John Carradine, and Scott Glenn, a guy with one of the single best faces in Hollywood. Still, Camille is a romantic comedy that's neither romantic nor much of a comedy. That means it's a ______, and even for fourteen bucks shipped from Amazon, I don't want to buy a ______. Rent It.
Video
It looks like Camille made the festival rounds in scope, but that 2.39:1 framing has been chucked out the driver's side window on Blu-ray. A couple of quick comparisons:
...and once more with feeling:
The 1.78:1 presentation on this Blu-ray disc isn't nearly as well-balanced or cinematic, tossing some dead space onto the top and bottom of the frame while feeling a touch more cramped on the sides. Even with that rejiggered framing, though, Camille really doesn't look that great. There's enough of a step up in crispness and clarity for there to not be any question that this is a shiny, newly-minted Blu-ray disc. Still, fine detail is kind of lackluster, edges can be pretty murky, there are a few really soft stretches, and the overall texture strikes me as kind of flat and blandly smooth. Its palette tends to be gloomy and overcast, although the brilliant blues of the Falls and Cowboy Bob's pastel horses do look terrific. The film grain that's left clumps together sometimes in motion, and there's one pattern in the background of Niagara Falls that jitters so violently that I'm not sure how it could've made it through a Q/A pass. Black levels frequently sink towards more of a dark purple too. Camille looks okay in high-def, but even for a modestly budgeted indie, it definitely falls a couple of notches below average.
Audio
Toggling
back and forth between the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack and the traditional Dolby Digital 5.1 (448kbps) track on this Blu-ray disc, the differences are kind of marginal. The music packs more of a wallop on the lossless track, and ditto for a few scattered sound effects -- cracks of gunfire, Silas getting slugged in the face, the wait-it-really-was-fatal motorcycle wreck -- but otherwise, they sound the same to me. Any real boost in distinctness and clarity...? Not really.
Camille is so intensely driven by its performances that it doesn't really lend itself to some sort of incendiary sound design or anything. The surround channels are reserved almost entirely for light ambiance: lapping water, ringing phones, clinking cutlery at a greasy spoon, cars whizzing by in the background... Imaging is consistently strong across the front speakers, but Camille frequently sounds more as if it's a stereo track with audio bleeding into the surrounds than an immersive six-channel mix. Its music is rendered really well, though, and I am impressed by how effectively the instrumentation is spread across each channel. Camille isn't exactly littered with megaton explosions or anything, but bass response is tight and punchy in the handful of moments when it needs to be. It's an okay track but doesn't sound quite as rich and full as I'm used to even more subdued films sounding on Blu-ray.
There aren't any dubs this time around, but subtitle streams are served up in English (SDH) and Spanish.
Extras
Nothing but a high-def theatrical trailer.
Oh, and I get that Camille is a flick about a dead bride and all, but could they have churned out a cover that was any more limp and lifeless than this?
The Final Word
Sienna Miller and the walking undead: two great tastes that taste great together, right? Not really. Camille mistakes over-the-top quirk for comedy and confuses schmaltz with sugary sweetness. I mean, I really like the cast they've lined up, and I respect the fact that Camille has such a skewed perspective rather than just warming over some stale formula for the eight quadrillionth time. Still, a romantic comedy that's hardly ever touching or particularly funny...? Rent It.
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
Oops. After a nasty spat at some random greasy spoon and a wedding ring clinks through some motorcycle gears and onto the blacktop, crash, splat, fizz fizz. Silas walks it off with nothing more than a scratch and a bloody tux to show for it, but Camille's lifeless ragdoll of a body is all twisted and contorted. Si barges into a house down the road to call 911, but he opts against it when he realizes that'd toss him back in the clink. When he stomps his way back, though, Camille's corpse is gone. Turns out she's down by the river washing up. Her neck's sore, but otherwise...? Everything seems five-by-five. Camille and her newly-minted hubby catch a ride north, but as they think they're trotting to their honeymoon, the cops are convinced Silas is on the run for robbery and murder. They've got part of it right. I mean, Camille is dead: she just doesn't know it yet. Yup, it's a post-mortem romance, with Silas starting to fall for his dearly
When I
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
When I was in junior high, there was a guy who'd put a plastic chair on his head and make space noises. Weird...? Sure. Funny...? No. Would I want to subject myself to that for an hour and a half straight...? Pass. That's kind of what Camille is like. It tries to subvert a standard issue romantic comedy premise by being finger-wagglingly-strange, but "strange" is where it stops. I like the skeleton of its plot, although Camille doesn't go far enough with it. I can't pass up a flick with Sienna Miller, James Franco, John Carradine, and Scott Glenn, a guy with one of the single best faces in Hollywood. Still, Camille is a romantic comedy that's neither romantic nor much of a comedy. That means it's a ______, and even for fourteen bucks shipped from Amazon, I don't want to buy a ______. Rent It.
Video
It looks like Camille made the festival rounds in scope, but that 2.39:1 framing has been chucked out the driver's side window on Blu-ray. A couple of quick comparisons:
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
The 1.78:1 presentation on this Blu-ray disc isn't nearly as well-balanced or cinematic, tossing some dead space onto the top and bottom of the frame while feeling a touch more cramped on the sides. Even with that rejiggered framing, though, Camille really doesn't look that great. There's enough of a step up in crispness and clarity for there to not be any question that this is a shiny, newly-minted Blu-ray disc. Still, fine detail is kind of lackluster, edges can be pretty murky, there are a few really soft stretches, and the overall texture strikes me as kind of flat and blandly smooth. Its palette tends to be gloomy and overcast, although the brilliant blues of the Falls and Cowboy Bob's pastel horses do look terrific. The film grain that's left clumps together sometimes in motion, and there's one pattern in the background of Niagara Falls that jitters so violently that I'm not sure how it could've made it through a Q/A pass. Black levels frequently sink towards more of a dark purple too. Camille looks okay in high-def, but even for a modestly budgeted indie, it definitely falls a couple of notches below average.
Audio
Toggling
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
Camille is so intensely driven by its performances that it doesn't really lend itself to some sort of incendiary sound design or anything. The surround channels are reserved almost entirely for light ambiance: lapping water, ringing phones, clinking cutlery at a greasy spoon, cars whizzing by in the background... Imaging is consistently strong across the front speakers, but Camille frequently sounds more as if it's a stereo track with audio bleeding into the surrounds than an immersive six-channel mix. Its music is rendered really well, though, and I am impressed by how effectively the instrumentation is spread across each channel. Camille isn't exactly littered with megaton explosions or anything, but bass response is tight and punchy in the handful of moments when it needs to be. It's an okay track but doesn't sound quite as rich and full as I'm used to even more subdued films sounding on Blu-ray.
There aren't any dubs this time around, but subtitle streams are served up in English (SDH) and Spanish.
Extras
Nothing but a high-def theatrical trailer.
Oh, and I get that Camille is a flick about a dead bride and all, but could they have churned out a cover that was any more limp and lifeless than this?
The Final Word
Sienna Miller and the walking undead: two great tastes that taste great together, right? Not really. Camille mistakes over-the-top quirk for comedy and confuses schmaltz with sugary sweetness. I mean, I really like the cast they've lined up, and I respect the fact that Camille has such a skewed perspective rather than just warming over some stale formula for the eight quadrillionth time. Still, a romantic comedy that's hardly ever touching or particularly funny...? Rent It.
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