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Séraphine (2008)

Director: Martin Provost

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From Time Out London

Winner of Best Film at France’s César awards, holding off stiff competition from ‘The Class’ and ‘I’ve Loved You So Long’, this utterly beguiling biopic about a cleaning lady with the artistic gifts of a Van Gogh is just a bit special. The vibrantly expressive paintings of Séraphine de Senlis currently hang in museums across France, but before and after World War One, when her response to the God-given beauties of the landscape simply poured out on to canvas, her employers and local townsfolk alike merely regarded her as a borderline-certifiable old coot. Significantly, one of the people for whom she cleaned was visiting German art critic Wilhelm Uhde, famed for discovering ‘primitive modernists’ including Henri Rousseau, and though Uhde’s later championing of this visionary outsider made her art-world reputation, it was to prove a turbulent experience for all concerned.

Touching on issues of proprietorial connoisseurship and class disenfranchisement, the film makes a tacit case for the marginalised as the truest source of creative worth. What’s particularly mesmerising, though, is how the sheer physicality of Yolande Moreau’s remarkable central performance – conveying the chapped realities of unrelenting toil – readily co-exists with its portrayal of Séraphine’s fiercely private spirituality. Director Martin Provost wisely chooses not to over-explain his peasant heroine’s exploits or milk them for thematic point-scoring or facile melodrama, instead approaching the material with the sort of transcendent simplicity a Robert Bresson or even a Maurice Pialat might have admired. His accomplishment is not just to suggest the limitless mystery of human possibility but to ennoble us by faith in its existence. Truly, a celluloid epiphany.

Author: Trevor Johnston

Time Out London Issue 2049: 26 November - 2 December

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User reviews of this film

Hazel Katcs said...

Posted on Dec 01 2009 19:44 I left the cinema feeling so moved by this superbly crafted story. So real, yet almost fantasy-like existence of this mentally fragile woman. It appears her mind + artistic talents were created in her intense spirituality and love of Catholocism. She believed her hand was guided by these supernatural powers which were not her own, which in turn enabled her to have this childlike humility. A truly magnificent work from Martin Provost and incredibly powerful performance from Yolanda Moreau.

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david glowacki said...

Posted on Dec 01 2009 01:08 Another french gem.A sad,moving film,rich in understatement and humility.Beautifully shot,with lots of slow close ups of everyday objects to highlight the cleaner/painter's humble existence.l loved it,but l suspect the young readership of time out will not be quite as fulsome in their praise.Why can't the Britsih make films like this.Afterall the main finance came from the BBC.

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