Séraphine

Plot synopsis:
The film follows the life of a middle-aged housekeeper, Séraphine Louis, who has a remarkable talent for painting. Untaught and following what she regards as religious inspiration she finds great appreciation in the beauty found in nature, especially her daily walks to work where she proudly and humbly stops to gaze at trees. In the beginning, it is noted that she stops to collect soil from plants as well as some blood from a dead pig. Later, in her small home lit by candles she is seen using these same ingredients while creating her art. At one point when her art begins to be seen, she is asked how she achieves the unusual effect in her "rouge" (reds). She replies that she prefers to keep that a secret.
Uhde, a noted art critic, encounters her first as a housekeeper and then sees one of her paintings, which he regards as very promising. Séraphine feels she is just a housekeeper and no one will take her seriously, but Uhde firmly assures her she has a talent and that he will look after her and promote her work. He kindly tells her to follow her gift, but he is a German and has to flee France and leave Séraphine when the 1914 war begins. However, she continues to do her paintings. In 1927, Uhde encounters Séraphine again and considers her work to have greatly improved. He begins buying her pictures and encouraging her to do nothing but paint. But prosperity upsets the woman's balance, she buys an expensive bridal gown even though she has no suitor, and claims to have received an important message from the angels. As the Great Depression gets under way, Uhde can no longer sell her paintings and is forced to disappoint Séraphine, who has begun to regard herself as a woman of means. She is mentally affected by the setback.
After she rouses the town while wearing her bridal gown, she is put into a lunatic asylum and eventually stops painting. Uhde visits but is advised not to make contact since this would deeply upset her, even to be told that he has finally sold some of her artworks. He decides to care for her well-being and secures her a room in the institution which enables her to go outside, where she begins to enjoy the beauties of nature again. It is revealed that she died in 1942 and that her art became famous and respected.

Tags: depressing

Review:
Veteran actress Yolande Moreau gives a dedicated performance in this biopic about the neo-primitive, or "naive," or "outsider" flower painter Séraphine Louis (1864-1948), now called Séraphine de Senlis, from the town where she worked.
An orphan looked down on by all, she survived barely by doing cleaning and laundry paid by the job, but in her little room in town at night by candlelight made strange, visionary paintings of flowers in large clusters, looking like diamonds or insects.
Beautifully photographed, meditative, with a strong sense of the quietude of rural France in the teens and twenties, this picture doesn't provide deep insight into either Séraphine or the German art collector who discovered and supported her, Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur, another veteran; he has one of the secondary leads in The Lives of Others).
He was the first to purchase the works of Picasso and discovered the great modern primitive Henri "Le Douanier" Rousseau.Slowly, methodically, the film shows how Uhde finds out by chance that the haggard looking middle aged woman cleaning up in the big rented house he's living in in Senlis with his sister is doing unique paintings on wood.
But WWI comes, and as a German he is forced to leave precipitously, leaving behind his little notebook and most of the art he's collected in France.Uhde returns years later with his sister and also a male lover, Helmut Kolle (Nico Rogner), a talented young German expressionist painter dying of TB, and rents another house in the area.
The trajectory is ever downward, though the final scenes suggest that her last years in a sanatorium may have been spend it serenity, close to the nature she loved.This film is thorough and handsomely made, but a little too much on the dutiful and academic side.
As director Provost has said, Uhde had a "dark side": his willingness to virtually abandon Séraphine when things got rough for her, and not to bother looking for her when he first returns to France after the War. Provost leaves this mysterious, which is just historically, but unsatisfying cinematically.
A frumpy cleaning woman well into middle age is discovered by an art critic to be a painter with talent comparable to Vincent Van Gogh.
Her story is told in the riveting Seraphine, directed by Martin Provost and winner of seven Césars, the French version of the Oscars, including a best actress award for Yolande Moreau.
With a screenplay by Martin Provost and Marc Abdelnour, the film is set in the village of Senlis outside of Paris where Séraphine Louis (Yolande Moreau) lives alone and must take odd jobs just to pay for her painting supplies.
Séraphine is a visionary, a devout Catholic who believes she is guided by a guardian angel and her exotic paintings of flowers and plants describe her feelings of closeness to spirit.Treated with disdain by her condescending employer, her life takes on new meaning when a tenant, German art critic Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur) hires Séraphine to clean for him and accidentally discovers one of her paintings that her boss had tossed aside.
He recognizes Séraphine's talent but never shows much enthusiasm, preferring to keep their relationship on a very business-like basis.Impressed by Seraphine's passionate art, Uhde offers to become her patron but, feeling estranged in France, must soon leave the country to return to Germany as the First World War begins.
One of the saddest scenes in the film is that of Séraphine dressed in a full wedding gown, going door to door giving her away her possessions.Provost in Séraphine captures the artist's mystical nature and her close bond with nature that shows up in her works, which are still exhibited in many of the world's museums.
This extraordinary biographical film tells the dramatic story of French paintress Séraphine de Senlis.
The tale starts in the summer before the First World War when a known German art collector and critic Wilhelm Uhde accidentally finds out that his servant woman is an amateur artiste painting in naïve but highly innovative and original style.
Séraphine de Senlis - born Séraphine Louis (1864- 1942) - may not be a painter well known to the entire art world today, but the story of her life makes a compelling film.
Writer Marc Abdelnour and writer/director Martin Provost have extracted all of the significant aspects of Séraphine Louis' life and have created a work of art as a film, much in the style of the way she created her life in art.
Séraphine Louis (Yolande Moreau) was born in 1864 in Arcy to a poor family and worked as a shepherdess until 1881 when she accepted the position as a domestic worker for the Sisters of Providence in Clermont: her life with the nuns enhanced her profoundly religious approach to her personal philosophy.
In 1914 the German art collector and critic Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur) took a room in the house owned by Mme Duphot (Geneviève Mnich), one of the houses where Séraphine worked, and when Wilhelm discovered a painting by Séraphine he immediately recognized a painter of great promise and provided Séraphine with the first response to her artistic efforts.
With the backing of a collector and friend, Séraphine began painting in earnest, showing locally and selling art under Wilhelm's sponsorship, until 1914 when with WW I breaking out, Wilhelm had to flee France, leaving behind his collection of paintings as well as the close bond the two had formed.
Séraphine continued painting as she lead her eccentric life in Senlis and in 1927 Wilhelm returned to France with his paramour - young painter Helmut Kolle (Nico Rogner) who suffered from tuberculosis - rediscovers Séraphine's art in a local Senlis exhibition, and realizes that she had survived and her art had flourished.
In 1929, Wilhelm organized an exhibition, 'Painters of the Sacred Heart', that featured Séraphine's art, launching her into a period of financial success she had never known - and was ill prepared to manage.
Yolande Moreau glows with a special radiance as the simple, spiritual, artistically driven Séraphine and Ulrich Tukar is the perfect balance as his own driven, unique 'first true collector'.
It tells the (true) story of a minor French painter, Séraphine Louis (later known as Séraphine de Senlis, after the village where she lived.) Our story picks up Séraphine working as a maid for Madame Duphot.
This lady of the house also rents an apartment to a German art critic-dealer, Wilhelm Uhde.
Uhde believes in the 'primitive' artists and takes a liking to some of the maid's work he spots.
S. Lowry.) The style seems natural to the childlike (if brilliant) personality of our peasant woman, although of course many naive art painters, including Lowry had, unlike Séraphine, plenty of schooling and formal knowledge of art technique.Production values in the film are high all round.
Seraphine Louis,who would eventually change her name to Seraphine deSenlis (after the name of her hometown)was an artist who cleaned houses by day,and painted by night (all the time while singing the hymns of her staunch Catholic upbringing,while she was growing up an orphan by Nuns).
When German art collector & critic,Wilhelm Uhde rents a room in the town of Senlis,while on the run from the insanity of World War I,and discovers a painting by Seraphine & is amazed by it's use of colour & texture.
Years later,he returns to Senlis,rediscovers an aged,but still painting Seraphine & vows to put her work on display (despite the fallout of the Wall Street crash of 1929,as well as the subsequent great depression,that managed to cripple a good percentage of Europe's economy,as well).
Martin Provost directs & co writes (with Marc Abdelnoir)a lovingly depicted portrait of a woman possessed of genius that is cruelly stolen too early (deSenlis spent her aged years in an insane asylum & never painted again in life).
The expression "discovered" is not wrong, but that wasn't just about the person, it's was also about another type of seeing and another type of expression.Séraphine lived a poor and humiliating life like most women of her class.
What would have happened if Séraphine de Senlis had been exposed in 1913, rue Notre Dame des Champs, within Paris, by Wilhelm Uhde, and if the First World War had not occurred?.
Yolande Moreau was excellent in the part of Seraphine de Senlis, and the production as a whole was impressive (locations, costume, acting, direction).
Portrayal of primitive modern artist Seraphine de Senlis.It is a good story.
Most of what I have read about primitive painters is that these fantastic "discoveries" turn out to be mostly duds--instilling false hopes in these poor artists.At one point in the movie someone viewing her art said the flowers looked like cut flesh.
Well done movie on mental illness and early twentieth century life although I hardly think someone needs to be locked up for wandering around town doing strange things in a wedding dress.The actress puts in a first class performance.Good intelligent adult movie..
By most accounts it was a good one, with a mesmerizing performance by Yolande Moreau as the touched Seraphine de Senlis, and solid production values all around, though I'm hard-pressed to single out any one standout technical achievement.
Seraphine Loius was an impoverished, self-taught French painter who claimed to be inspired directly by God. This film of her life depicts her partly in the obvious way (as an idiot-savant), but also as a woman utterly determined, with a keen sense of her own worth and an acute sensitivity to her absence of value in the eyes of others.
The film then went on in a regular way but I don't like the ending, I think perhaps I just feel sorry for her.The paintings are crazy like her, they're intense and the flowers sinister and unreal.
The viewing of 'Seraphine' and the magnificent performance of Yolande Moreau, an actress who seems born to play this role reminded me a few other films who had on their center great artists devoted to their art up to the limits of mental sanity.
The famous German art collector and critic Wilhelm Uhde (acted with welcome discretion by Ulrich Tukur), one of these man who do not buy art to resell it, but sell art to buy what they love finds summer refuge from Paris and his own daemons in the French countryside.
The scene is sordid, in a decrepit building filmed without inspiration (I believe that this is intentional, in this film only art and nature have color and beauty), the door is closed, and anything can happen at this point, even the end of the movie.The door does open and the next and final part of the film is dedicated to the sudden success of Seraphine, her lack of capacity to deal with success, he sliding into insanity.
While in need and under harsh economic pressure her faith was channeled into art, when success comes she does not stop to create (actually creates some of her best works at this time) but her mystic beliefs try to find other ways of expression, which for the rest of the world belong to insanity.Director Martin Provost makes a wise choice not to comment or direct the viewers into judging the character, but rather lets them draw their own conclusions.
The scenes where we see Seraphine painting are magnificent, she is determined and fragile, naive and passionate.The real Seraphine Louis or Seraphine de Senlis spent the last few years of her life in a mental institution exactly at the time when her work started to be known, appreciated, and loved by the art public world wide.
The biopic of French painter Seraphine de Senlis, born Seraphine Louis (Yolande Moreau), at the turn of the last century is among the best that the French cinema has offered.The story of the title protagonist is told in a way you wouldn't find in Hollywood – no fancy montages, no flashy flashbacks, no annoying voice-over, no pretentious twist and turns.
Attentive with character development and crisps with event narration, the filmmakers in turn paint a vivid portray of Seraphine: lowly housekeeper and laundress, plain appearance, childlike disposition, simple religious devotion, subdued but keen observer and a passion for conveying the beauty of nature on to canvas.
She is "ahead of her time" in her style of painting that art critic Wilhelm Udhe (Ulrich Tukur) prefers to describe with the term "primitive modernism" rather than the more unflattering "naïve".The relationship between Seraphine and Wilhelm her mentor is tantalizingly subtle.
A true lover and connoisseur of art, he would naturally love Seraphine for her talent and work.
Wilhelm is someone who can truly see how beautiful she is and her infatuation for him is only natural, as in her jealousy of a woman who later turns out to be his sister.The seven Cesars include best film, cinematography and Moreau's what must be a very close (but very deserved) win over Kristin Scott Thomas who is nothing short of brilliant in "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime"..
If Marion Cotillard was born to play Piaf then Moreau was born to play Seraphine, the beautiful innocent, condemned to a life of harsh servitude yet never wavers from her simple faith and sings to the virgin on a daily basis.completely untrained she uses what little spare time she has to paint flowers and fruit with no thought of reward, a real definition of Art For Art's Sake.
Because this is a true story about a real person her gift is, ultimately appreciated by the German art collector/critic who also 'discovered' Rousseau; for a mayfly moment she knows something akin to happiness/contentment before spending her last years in an asylum.
Yes Seraphine of Senlis is an interesting film in which you may loose interest!
The lead actress was very good and the filming beautiful (if having extended and multiple shots on Seraphine's large behind could be so!).
I have known French rural life post second world war and latter had a similar status as Seraphine had although I was one of the rare person in my category to have been treated as a member of the family I was working for.
Séraphine is a French-Belgian production about the housekeeper turned artist of the same name, who first gained fame between the last two World Wars.
One of the lodgers in a house she services is Uhde, an up and coming art critic and collector from Germany, who recognizes Séraphine's potential, despite disparaging remarks made about her artwork by the local gentry.
Uhde even buys a few of Séraphine's paintings but eventually loses all his art possessions when World War I begins and he's forced to flee France, back to Germany.When Uhde returns to France between the wars in 1927, he looks Séraphine up again and notes her skills have improved a hundred fold.
It's revealed at the end of the film that Séraphine never left the mental hospital and died in 1942.
So, when a film gets the story right--telling the WHOLE story--I really appreciate it."Séraphine" is the unusual and tragic story of a strange figure in the art world, Séraphine Louis.
Such is the case with Seraphine Louis, a poor woman from rural Senlis, in the Oise department of France.The life of Seraphine is at the center of a film that tries to understand a complex life that only brought her sadness and heartaches, and conspired to land her in an asylum for the mentally insane.
Wilhem realizes Seraphine is beyond help and he decides to institutionalize her in a facility where she will never get better.The film directed by Martin Provost impresses us for its beauty as well as for a wasted life that had such unrealized possibilities.
The only thing that is not made clear in the film is the earlier part of Seraphine's life since we only meet her after she is a grown woman.The work of Yolande Moreau is magnificent.
Martin Provost had a great vision and he painted a large canvas taking the viewer along to examine the beauty thus created..
This is the story of the French artist Séraphine Louis, posthumously known as "Séraphine de Senlis" (Senlis being her home town).
This is her life until Wilhelm Uhde, a German art critic she tends to, accidentally sees one of her early paintings and is taken with it.
Religious inspiration seems to be a source for a lot of great art.Yolande Moreau is perfectly cast as Séraphine; she gives a very believable performance.
Seraphine Louis (1864-1942), who used the name Seraphine de Senlis (for the town where she worked), was French cleaning-woman who heared voices of angels and painted vivid flower arrangements.
Unconventional and humanistic, Seraphine is a film which treats this obese middle-aged woman - who looked like a sweet old granny in the pictures I have seen - as a beautiful human being, unpolluted crazy visionary.
Affecting biopic about a French cleaning lady, Seraphine Louis, who escapes her monotonous existence by walking in the countryside and painting colourful representations of what she sees there.Then along comes a German art critic who likes what he sees and gives her hope that one day soon she will become rich and famous.
Problem is the first world war starts and he has to flee the country.He comes back a few years after the war ends expecting that Seraphine has died, but comes across a painting of hers in a local exhibition and gets in touch again.Anyway, the subtleties of this film, for me, lay first of all in the artist's love of the countryside and obsessive desire to represent this in her own way.
Yolande Moreau, magnificent in the role of a lifetime, and Laurent Brunet's stunning photography provide - along with the artworks of Seraphine herself - reasons enough to see this film.
But I've lived in France for many years and seen hundreds of French films and there are many like this one.