Séraphine tells the ('true') story of the bedraggled and arguably deranged eponymous heroin who works as a cleaning lady in Paris. By day she cleans and by night she paints with whatever materials she can muster together. When her work is miraculously spotted by Wilhelm Uhde a renound art critic he attempts to launch her career as an artist however tragic setbacks make this heart wrenchingly difficult. The film is based on the life and work of Séraphine Louis, an artist I knew absolutely nothing about before I watched this film. I have been waiting to watch Séraphine for an inordinate period of time with it having been made in 2008, given a UK release during November 2009 and then finally given an extremely limited screening in Exeter for two days in February 2010. So around a year and a half after I'd heard about this film's production I have finally seen it. Being awarded 7 French Academy Awards as well as starring the superbly talented Yolande Moreau my expectations were fairly high.
The first thing that struck me about this film is the absolutely stunning cinematography; the lighting especially resonates as a key success throughout the film. Laurent Brunet was the cinematographer and was awarded the César for Best Cinematography, I have not seen any of his other work but he is certainly a name I will look out for in the future. The visual allure of the film lulled me comfortably into the narrative very effectively making the film initially a very comfortable, easy and intriguing watch. Moreau's performance is absolutely faultless from beginning to end. The role is incredibly difficult to perform without being overly subtle or overt but she manages to strike a perfect balance between her character's almost schizophrenic flipping between repressed harmony and deluded turmoil. She has been awarded three Best Actress awards already and I hope more come flooding her way for a performance of a standard that you only really see a few times within a decade.
Despite the wonderful performances and cinematography I did find myself getting fairly bored. I have no quams with a slow narrative progression so long as the film is constantly exploring or developing upon the key themes and motifs within it. Unfortunately Séraphine does become fairly tiresome and repetitive after an hour or so of viewing as the plot progresses at the speed of a tug boat pulling and oil tanker. It become very obvious where the story is going and when it gets to the next stage of the arc it is all much of a muchness to what was viewed before. There are a few stand out scenes in the last hour of the film that were truly stunning and made the less interesting scenes worth persevering with-most notably a montage of Séraphine displaying her new pieces of artwork to her friends and workers. This display of her work shocked me with its raw beauty, I have no idea how I have not heard of this artist before with artwork as stunningly visceral, bold and modern as hers. If around twenty minutes to half an hour of the film had been cut out I think it would have been a much more memorable, engaging and provocative piece of work.
Séraphine is really the perfect example of a piece of Heritage cinema which 40+ year olds get serious boners for. A broad definition of Heritage cinema would be films that are often adaptations from classic novels/plays or based on the lives of historical figures-often set in a pre-Great War era. Heritage cinema is in many ways very similar to the Period Drama genre. As much as I don't have a problem with the concept behind the genre Heritage films are often cinematically fairly dull; abiding to classical editing and narrative forms without really doing anything particularly interesting-merely using the medium to tell the story than explore what the story could mean. Fortunately Séraphine is predominantly an interesting and relatively engaging watch due to the faultless cinematography and Moreau's sublime performance. This is definitely a film to recommend to your parents when it is given a DVD release (I was probably the youngest person in the cinema by around 30 years-unsettling to say the least).
Here is a list of a few fantastic Heritage pieces that I would highly recommend:
Jean De Florette
Manon des sources
Orson Welles' Othello
Throne of Blood
The first thing that struck me about this film is the absolutely stunning cinematography; the lighting especially resonates as a key success throughout the film. Laurent Brunet was the cinematographer and was awarded the César for Best Cinematography, I have not seen any of his other work but he is certainly a name I will look out for in the future. The visual allure of the film lulled me comfortably into the narrative very effectively making the film initially a very comfortable, easy and intriguing watch. Moreau's performance is absolutely faultless from beginning to end. The role is incredibly difficult to perform without being overly subtle or overt but she manages to strike a perfect balance between her character's almost schizophrenic flipping between repressed harmony and deluded turmoil. She has been awarded three Best Actress awards already and I hope more come flooding her way for a performance of a standard that you only really see a few times within a decade.
Despite the wonderful performances and cinematography I did find myself getting fairly bored. I have no quams with a slow narrative progression so long as the film is constantly exploring or developing upon the key themes and motifs within it. Unfortunately Séraphine does become fairly tiresome and repetitive after an hour or so of viewing as the plot progresses at the speed of a tug boat pulling and oil tanker. It become very obvious where the story is going and when it gets to the next stage of the arc it is all much of a muchness to what was viewed before. There are a few stand out scenes in the last hour of the film that were truly stunning and made the less interesting scenes worth persevering with-most notably a montage of Séraphine displaying her new pieces of artwork to her friends and workers. This display of her work shocked me with its raw beauty, I have no idea how I have not heard of this artist before with artwork as stunningly visceral, bold and modern as hers. If around twenty minutes to half an hour of the film had been cut out I think it would have been a much more memorable, engaging and provocative piece of work.
Séraphine is really the perfect example of a piece of Heritage cinema which 40+ year olds get serious boners for. A broad definition of Heritage cinema would be films that are often adaptations from classic novels/plays or based on the lives of historical figures-often set in a pre-Great War era. Heritage cinema is in many ways very similar to the Period Drama genre. As much as I don't have a problem with the concept behind the genre Heritage films are often cinematically fairly dull; abiding to classical editing and narrative forms without really doing anything particularly interesting-merely using the medium to tell the story than explore what the story could mean. Fortunately Séraphine is predominantly an interesting and relatively engaging watch due to the faultless cinematography and Moreau's sublime performance. This is definitely a film to recommend to your parents when it is given a DVD release (I was probably the youngest person in the cinema by around 30 years-unsettling to say the least).
Here is a list of a few fantastic Heritage pieces that I would highly recommend:
Jean De Florette
Manon des sources
Orson Welles' Othello
Throne of Blood
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