Camille 2000

Radley Metzger updates La Dame aux Camelias to jet-set Rome and spends the budget where you can see it: mirrored bedrooms, op-art interiors, inflatable plastic furniture and one memorable cage. Marguerite is the kept woman working through wealthy lovers while a doomed romance with a younger man circles, so the melodrama is pure Dumas while the surfaces are pure 1969, styled to within an inch of parody. Metzger made erotica for people who wanted it to look like a Vogue spread, and this is the most lavish version of that, gorgeous to look at and only intermittently interested in its own plot. It moves slowly and knows it. If you only know him from The Lickerish Quartet, this is the other one worth your time.