Headed by some of Europe's brightest young performers, Camel centers on the plight of Frederica who, quite simply, has too much money. Imprisoned by privilege, she's unable to deal with daily life as an adult. Her boyfriend indicates he's ready to start a family, but just then an old flame enters the picture. Her family, already somewhat disconnected from reality, is destabilized further because her father is dying. Overwhelmed by her upcoming inheritance, her tangled relationships with those around her, and a haunting guilt, Frederica seeks comfort in daydreams, where reality becomes perfect and wonderful. Using the cinema as, borrowing Orson Welles' phrase, a ribbon of dreams, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi shows an iconoclastic pleasure in blending her two filmmaking backgrounds--Italian and French. Sometimes she displays the cruelty of Eric Rohmer's way of looking at well-to-do young Parisiennes; sometimes it's the humorously critical way Nanni Moretti treats family neuroses. The teaming of Bruni Tedeschi and Chiara Mastroianni is remarkable in its contrasts. The two actresses are implicated with intelligence in a relationship in which they are rivals and accomplices. They share a similar background, young Italian actresses raised in France as part of affluent families--and they've put this background at the service of their characters. The film plays with this complicity and flirts with the very essence of Italian popular comedy: joyful despair.