Well, the 14th annual Boston French Film Festival closed yesterday with a screening of Séraphine, and although I didn’t see any of the other 19 films, I feel confident in proclaiming Séraphine as the highlight of the festival. Let’s review some of the descriptions of the other films :
Rumba: In this deadpan and near-silent comedy, a tango-loving couple remains optimistic in the face of tragedy.
La belle personne: This film follows the complex romantic relationships of Parisian high school students—and their teachers.
Cliente: A matter-of-fact comedy about the world’s oldest profession.
(The French have gifted the world with some of the finest writers, philosophers, artists, and certainly the premiere cuisine… but there’s a particularly grating quality to their music and cinema).
Séraphine is a historical drama based on the life of French painter Séraphine Louis (quirky housekeeper by day, holy-rolling banshee painter by night.) It won seven César awards (France’s Oscars) in 2009, including best actress and best film, a category in which it was up against 4 matter-of-fact comedies about the world’s oldest profession.
Séraphine is a middle-aged domestic worker and laundress, fiercely devout in her religious faith as well as her love of nature. She toils for coins that she uses to buy white paint and then concocts vivid colors by mixing it with animal blood, wax, leaves, and seeds. She paints late at night while singing warbling hymns. She claims that her guardian angel tells her what to paint.
Séraphine, you see, is a lunatic.
As fate would have it, one of Séraphine’s customers is noted German art collector Willhelm Uhde, who recognizes the genius of Séraphine’s paintings and buys all of her work. Then World War I breaks out, and he leaves France, while Séraphine loses her mind even more. When he returns, her paintings are more wonderful than ever (see left), but her mental state is precarious at best.
I loved the narrative story, the cinematography, the well-worn theme of the ‘crazy eccentric artist’ from the vantage point of a middle-aged Frenchwoman who scrubs floors and launders sheets. I loved this movie. If you have Netflix, go add Séraphine to your queue. Honestly, you’d never guess it is a French film (except for the fact that everyone’s speaking French).
