Séraphine (2008)

I hated for this to end. Languid and beautiful, the based-on-a-true-story of a chambermaid who painted even when she couldn't afford art supplies kept us enthralled for over 2 hours. It's a shoo-in for a Foreign Film Oscar nomination and won Best Picture, Actress, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Musical Score, Production Design, and Costume Design at the César Awards (French Oscars) in February 2009, among others. The movie starts in 1912, as Europe is heating up before World War I, and the interiors (luxurious or spartan) and exteriors are lovingly photographed in deep, rich, colors of nature (plus Séraphine's blue wardrobe) and lamplight. One little thing that tickled me: Séraphine's shoes in the early scenes click like tap shoes on cobblestones and wooden floors. I'm not familiar with the work of the director/co-writer Martin Provost, his writing partner Marc Abdelnour, nor the cinematographer Laurent Brunet. Belgian Yolande Moreau, who plays the title role, had small parts in Amélie (2001), Paris je t'aime (2006), and the documentary The Beaches of Agnés (2008), which may capture a documentary nod this year (I haven't seen it yet), among many in a long resumé. Moreau as Séraphine says little, but she tells much with her body language and scrubbed middle-aged face (Séraphine is 48 in the beginning of the movie, Moreau was about 56) with her eyes cast up or down. Ulrich Tukur (pivotal roles in The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen - 2006), winner of 2007 Foreign Film Oscar, and The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band - 2009), which I plan to see when it comes here) was also very good as Séraphine's German patron Wilhelm Uhde.

When we saw it on the smallest screen in the university-area complex, 38 of 45 seats were taken for the Sunday matinee, which is heartening for an "art film." Though netflix shows its DVD release date is unknown, it's available now from amazon's Canada site amazon.ca, and I was able to put it in my shopping cart with my American address before cancelling the sale (just an experiment!). Séraphine is a moving story, one that falls into Jack's and my category of stuff you can't make up, all the better with its artistic presentation by all involved. We both enjoyed it a lot and recommend it to grown-ups.