Film Festival 09 - Seraphine
Séraphine
France/Belgium 2008, 126m
Director: Martin Provost
Festivals: Toronto 2008
Best Film, Best Actress (Yolande Moreau), César Awards
2009
This movingly dramatized, beautifully mounted portrait of the
French 'naïve' painter Séraphine de Senlis (1864-1942)
was the deserved winner at France's César Awards this
February, sweeping up the prizes for Best Film, Actress, Original
Screenplay, Photography, Score, Costumes and Production Design. The
marvellous Belgian actress Yolande Moreau vanishes into the role of
the awkward small town housemaid who believed God had told her to
paint. We first encounter her furtively gathering soil, animal's
blood and the run-off oil from church candles to mix the paints she
has invented for herself. She's like a pagan spirit, trapped in her
heavy body and the cumbersome skirts of a century ago. But when she
paints that spirit flies free in ecstatic celebration of flowers,
fruit and fertility itself. The intensity of these paintings, now
considered masterpieces of modern primitivism, can still be
experienced in galleries around the world.
Martin Provost's film focuses on her relationship with her
'discoverer', the German art critic Wilhelm Uhde, who was a friend
of her employer. His patronage saved her life but also catapulted
her to an art world prominence she was ill equipped to handle.
Ulrich Tukur is excellent as the conscientious Uhde, enthralled by
the wild talent of his protégée, intent on realising
the monetary value of her work and frightfully aware of her
unworldliness. - BG
"Provost's fictionalized portrait of this forgotten painter is a
revelation& A testament to creativity and the resilience of one
woman's spirit, Séraphine is a marvel - a celebration of art
and nature and an acknowledgment of the costs involved." - Piers
Handling, Toronto Film Festival
In French and German, with English subtitles
