Film Reviews

Seraphine

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Ulrich Tukur
• Details: France/Belgium / 125mins (PG).

A winner of seven César Awards, including Best Actress for Yolande Moreau, Séraphine is a biopic on French artist Séraphine de Senlis. Where it succeeds it dramatising the events of her life, Seraphine stops short of being completely engrossing when all the elements for a beautiful film where there.
The story begins in 1914, in Senlis, a town just outside Paris, where Séraphine Louis (Moreau) is a middle-aged browbeaten maid on the verge of destitution. She lives in a tiny one-room apartment that she owes two months rent on, she keeps the crumbs from lunch to eat later, she steals blood from the butcher and candle wax from the church. The last two, however, are not essential to her survival but to her art, as Séraphine stays up all night painting beautiful and groundbreaking art. It doesn't cross her mind that her art will get her anywhere but when German art collector and critic Wilhelm Uhde (Tukur) happens across one of her paintings he's overwhelmed with Séraphine's raw talent. Uhde takes her under his wing but just as things are looking up WWI breaks out and Uhde is forced to flee France. The story picks up again in 1927; Uhde returns to the area to find that Séraphine is still downtrodden but her talent has come to fruition. Her mental instability, however, which has been kept in check until now, finally overwhelms her.
Seraphine is a Cinderella story with a dark and twisted edge. Provost, who also co-wrote the script, manages to steer a steady ship between the mad artist and the regular person. She's not just crazy or eccentric in Provost's eyes - she's a woman first and foremost, if a little rough-and-ready. At first she feels attracted to Uhde and his jealous of the time he spends with Anne-Marie (Bennent) but soon forgets about that when he confesses his homosexuality; later she regales a friend of the only time she fell in love; it was with a soldier whom she was engaged to but he disappeared. This is a tactic on Provost's part to show that Seraphine is more than just crazy, more than an just an artist - she's human with all the hopes and dreams that everyone has. We're to feel sorry for her. Job done. We do.
Sympathy, however, seems to be the only emotion an audience is supposed to feel in Seraphine. A talent wasted, the entire film asks 'isn't it a pity?' in every scene and it can be a bit much answering 'yes' every time. After a while, the audience might ask the director another question: What else have you got? It's impossible to ask Moreau for anything more. A deserved winner of any award coming to her, she's perfect in the role. Moreau depicts Séraphine as almost animal-like, in tune with nature. She likes to pee in the open, sit in trees and bath naked in full view of anyone who might happen by. When she's not walking around barefoot, she wears boots that clip-clop like a horse. It's a totally unflattering and brave role to play.

Review by Gavin Burke