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SERAPHINE centers on Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), a simple housekeeper whose brilliantly colorful canvases adorn some of the most famous galleries in the world. Wilhelm Uhde, a German art critic and collector (Ulrich Ukur) discovers her paintings while she is working for him as a maid in Senlis near Paris in the early part of the 20th century. Martin Provost s fictionalized and tragic portrait of this forgotten painter is a testament to creativity and the resilience of one woman s spirit. In 1913, the German collector Wilhelm Uhde, the first Picasso buyer and discoverer of acclaimed naïve primitive painter Le Douanier Rousseau, rents an apartment in Senlis in order to write and take a break from his Parisian life. He hires a cleaning lady, Séraphine, 48 years old. Some time later, while visiting the home of a prominent local family, he notices a small painting on wood. His surprise is great when he finds out that it is by none other than Séraphine. A poignant and unexpected relationship then develops between the avant-garde art dealer and the visionary cleaning lady. ...Read more |
SERAPHINE centers on Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), a simple housekeeper whose brilliantly colorful canvases adorn some of the most famous galleries in the world. Wilhelm Uhde, a German art critic and collector (Ulrich Ukur) discovers her paintings while she is working for him as a maid in Senlis near Paris in the early part of the 20th century. Martin Provost s fictionalized and tragic portrait of this forgotten painter is a testament to creativity and the resilience of one woman s spirit. In 1913, the German collector Wilhelm Uhde, the first Picasso buyer and discoverer of acclaimed naïve primitive painter Le Douanier Rousseau, rents an apartment in Senlis in order to write and take a break from his Parisian life. He hires a cleaning lady, Séraphine, 48 years old. Some time later, while visiting the home of a prominent local family, he notices a small painting on wood. His surprise is great when he finds out that it is by none other than Séraphine. A poignant and unexpected relationship then develops between the avant-garde art dealer and the visionary cleaning lady. ...Read more |
Séraphine is an elegantly fictionalized biopic about 19th century modern primitive painter, Séraphine de Senlis, who was a contemporary of Henri Rousseau's. The tale spans approximately 25 years during which Séraphine and her champion, German art critic and collector, Wilhelm Uhde, survive two wars and drastic economic changes that affect the art market. Martin Provost's feature is completely character driven, and as such relies on Yolande Moreau's caring portrayal of the eccentric Séraphine, and Ulrich Tukur's calm, academic demeanor as Mr. Uhde. In Provost's telling of this virtually unknown story, Séraphine is a middle-aged woman working as a housekeeper in Senlis, France, when Uhde arrives as a guest and discovers that this odd woman is a talented visionary artist. Since Uhde's main focus is garnering respect and precious Parisian salon space for artists deemed "naive," it is an uncanny and fortuitous coincidence that he stumbles upon Séraphine. Scenes alternate primarily between those encounters between Séraphine and her new friend, and those depicting Séraphine's thought processes or unique working methods. Some of the most beauteous sequences unfold as Séraphine hunts pastoral stream banks for wild plants and soil samples she uses for paint pigment in her floral landscapes. This artist's religious upbringing clearly influences her piously austere lifestyle, and the film implies that the mania plaguing her is exacerbated by delusions of saintliness. Indeed, the film does a wonderful job of showing the subtleties of Séraphine's mental illness in both positive and negative lights. It also elucidates the tragic political circumstances that prevented Séraphine from becoming as renowned as Rousseau, which doubles the story's sense of improbability and chance meeting. The film, on one level, revivifies a spectacular tale to rescue an artist from obscurity. More importantly, though, it poetically questions the amount of luck involved in survival by asking how much control one ultimately has over one's own life. --Trinie Dalton ...Read more |
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