Serafina

The film asks interesting questions about art.Where does it come from? How is it made? How are we able to value it?The subject is Séraphine Louis (1864-1942), an unschooled amateur painter whose works and talent were discovered by an art expert who did not know he was looking for them. She (Séraphine) came to his attention unexpectedly. He was Wilhelm Uhde (1874-1947), a German art scholar, critic, collector and dealer who had been living and working in Paris prior to the First World War.As the film begins Uhde has just rented rooms in the house of Madame Duphot in the small town of Senlis in the countryside north of Paris. He has come here for the quietude and isolation, having escaped the stress of living and working in the capital. He intends to write. Séraphine works part-time as a washerwoman and cook for Madame Duphot. She is paid just a few sous for her hard labour of scrubbing floors and washing sheets and clothing in the local river. We get the impression she comes from peasant stock and this is true. Though not revealed in the film, Séraphine was born on a farm and lived for a time as a shepherdess. Though she was able to read and write, her education was limited. At a young age she lost both her parents to disease and was cared for by an elder sister. In her teens she did domestic work in a convent. Some of the sisters there cared for her and became her friends. We see two of them in the film, singing together with Séraphine in a spirit of love.As the film shows, Séraphine was deeply affected by her time in the convent. She is a devout believer in God's grace, mercy and compassion. In the local church she kneels and prays to the image of the Holy Virgin.She talks to birds, insects, flowers and trees. She swims and bathes naked in the local stream. She sings and talks to herself. She collects nettles, branches, twigs. We see her look up at the sky, the sunlight glinting through the branches and leaves of a tree, her face joyous, radiant, beatific. We also discover that the nature that surrounds her is her. No separation, no barriers. And it is this, her immersion in the heart of creation, that becomes the wellspring of her art, an art of devotion and revelation. Pure feeling, sensation, acceptance.She paints flowers on wooden boards. Wild and unruly, they are tangled and intense. She is too poor to buy paint, so she improvises and creates her own from scratch — from animal blood, candle wax, roots and plants and mud. She is more than a so-called naïve painter. She paints from the earth itself.When Uhde sees this he is astonished. He has an eye for originality. We get the feeling he is weary of artifice, of derivative talent and ideas. He has come to Senlis for freshness. He finds it here in green fields, streams and blue skies. But he also finds it in Séraphine's art. It is real, honest, authentic. It shows something greater than talent. It has heart, depth, soul. Seeing this, he encourages her. But she is suspicious at first. It must be mockery. She is used to being laughed at, her background, manner, speech and appearance all sources of derision. She is poor and we know how the poor are treated – with pity, revulsion, condescension and contempt.But Uhde is sincere. He knows and understands beauty. With the ardour of a suitor he courts her trust, winning her acceptance at last. To the extent he can, he becomes her patron. By day her coarse hands are worked raw, but at night she continues to paint, singing her creations into being by candlelight in her simple bare garret.The beauty of it all is that only Uhde understands. He is the future and modernity. He has the critical eye. To everyone else Séraphine is just the mad washerwoman who climbs trees to sit with birds. So, along with his Braques, Dufys, Derains, Picassos and Rousseaus, he is also gaining Séraphines for his collection.But irony and tragedy, never far afield, strike. The Kaiser declares war. Belgium is invaded. It is the summer of 1914. The peace and tranquility of Senlis and France are sundered. Wilhelm Uhde is international, a morally stateless lover of French culture, but now his passport marks him out as an enemy. He must flee for his life and does so to Switzerland. Paris, Senlis and Séraphine are abandoned.Uhde survives the war. The good German is not destroyed. He follows his instincts and returns to what he loves — to art in France. He is in Chantilly near Senlis in 1927 with his sister Anne-Marie. It is she who sees a small notice in the paper about a town art exhibition in Senlis. Uhde hears the news with great sadness and regret. The war destroyed so much. Surely Séraphine and her art could not have survived it. But he must know. He must go. He drives to Senlis in his shiny new motorcar. The exhibition is as advertised: a show of local artists. There are several rooms, many paintings, few interested observers. Uhde saunters through them, hardly looking, largely unimpressed. Pretty landscapes, pedestrian portraits, dreary drawings, bourgeois mediocrity. But finally he comes to a room and pauses. We see his face, the lens lingering there. His eyes widen and into them come relief and joy. She is alive. Her art lives!The canvases are huge, some as much as two meters high. The art is advanced, better than ever. Patron and painter are reunited. He puts her on a steady monthly income, paying for her art supplies and provisions. She moves house, buys new furniture and dresses, comes up in the world. But life has been hard. She is old now, aged 63.1929 arrives. The stock market in New York crashes. The world economy is shaken. The art market collapses and Uhde's funds dwindle. Stranded again, but this time it's too much for Séraphine. Success and admiration, so close for grasping, are withdrawn. Her heart breaks, her mind is lost. She will spend her remaining years in an asylum.The story mainly ends here but has an epilogue. Uhde cannot abandon her a second time. He helps pay for her care till the very end.The war came and destroyed many things, but it could not kill beauty, love and respect. This tender, wondrous film reminds us why art is vital in our lives.

You realise that this film must be pretty good to have beaten "Mesrine" when the Cesar award went to best film. (It picked up 6 other awards at the Cesars too.) Had it not been for this fact, the lack of publicity and seemingly uninteresting subject matter would have mean't this film would have passed me by. Although I discovered it late, it is fascinating to compare this with more recent French films such as "Partir" and "White Material" which have enjoyed considerable critical success this side of the Channel but which are totally inferior to this film in every aspect.This film charts the discovery by a German art critic and dealer that the cleaner of his lodgings has a talent for painting in the same style of the artists he was trying to promote at the same time. The first part of the film teasingly prevents the viewer seeing what Seraphine is painting and concentrates upon her innocent life-style and how she collects the materials she used to produce her art. However, whilst the appeal of her paintings takes her by surprise as she was simply inspired by her faith to paint, the tone of the film ultimately makes you realise that it can only end in tears. Where the film really takes off is with the departure of the critic from France at the outbreak of the First World War and how she survives before the critic Uhde rediscovers her and the market for her work takes off. Whilst obviously lacking the budget of "Mesrine", there is plenty of nice period detail, numerous vintage cars and picturesque settings to make the film very appealing and even though the film is a little bit sad, this is by no means depressing and I was mesmerised by both the story and the originality of the paintings when the director ultimately allowed the viewer to see what was being produced. I am not an art fan by any means but the pictures transpire to be particularly beautiful.Yolande Moreau puts in a brilliant performance as the simple and child-like Seraphine whose life is immeasureabaly improved by the change in her fortunes but whose tale proves ultimately to be tragic. Whilst Seraphine is obviously someone who might have been considered to have been classed as "simple" in her time, I was intrigued how the attitude towards her changed from the beginning of the film in 1912 to the late twenties when she started to gain a reputation. Ultimately, the film does not have a happy ending and it is doubftul as to whether the sight of an empty garden seat has ever been used so emotionally in a film before. My advice would be to watch this film even if you have no interest in art. This is a brilliant piece of film making and every bit as good as the BBC 's production of Steven Poliakoff's "The Lost Prince" which covers some of the same issues.