Don't watch the shorter version...
In the shorter version you cannot observe the journey that artist and model (muse) take in creating beauty. The process that some artists go through to literally extract beauty from their model.
He mentions a sculptor who has done a few works which "aren't bad". This, I think, is done for two reasons, as a hope an optimism that they might create a few works which "aren't bad" and also to make the comparison between two dimensional art and sculpture, where it is often said that the artist simply "removes" the bits that do not belong to reveal the beauty that exists within. Soon after he makes a drawing, unlike others which have come before, a large expanse of black with blank areas that compose her form. It is a singular work, in that the others are more traditional line drawings. It resembles an imaging of a piece of marble or stone with the areas to be removed appearing as black areas of the paper. A brilliant visual metaphor linking his melancholy statements only moments before.
Never before have I see such a captivating representation of an artist in his declining years attempting to grasp the fire, the light that he so easily commanded before. He constantly cajoles his model into helping him capture that which eludes him. She doesn't understand and vacillates between confusion, irritation and amusement at what she seems to consider as overwrought fanaticism for his work. She is honored and interested, but is completely unready for the realities of modeling for this great man.
Her laissez faire attitude toward life and disillusionment draw her to this artist, but she resists him and finds it hard to comprehend someone who engages life, seizes it so differently from her own way. He accurately and deftly states that she must be broken down first before he can build her into something that can serve both his *and* her purposes. It is a fascinating contrast between one philosophy and another concerning the methodology of living one's life.
In the beginning she states, "A simple formula can sometimes bring much money. That's a way to start collecting houses, women, paintings. Yes. It's going to be about paintings. Nicholas is a painter." Clearly, she has tired of this "formula" and is thrust into Edouard's world in which art is anything but a "formula". It is a process, an elusive, capricious mistress that will not be "collected". It can only be touched, shared, never tamed. Through Edouard, Marianne learns another way where artist and model are partners. A place where she isn't just another trinket to be shoved at the rear of the shelf when another, newer one is acquired. At first, Marianne may find Edouard to be like herself as she considers Julienne, but later she finds that it is Julienne who has lost her fire and pushed Edouard to the back as she is no longer able to engage with him as he needs.
In the end, what they find, create together is it's own reward. Not something to be "acquired". In fact it is so precious that only they can truly appreciate it and the one way to truly honor and respect what they have done is to hide it from the world. For treating it as yet another object "collected" would defile the journey and reduce it to formula.
"...nothing is left of me, each time I see her..." - Catullus