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Seraphine

Universal acclaim
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | War
Written by:
Martin Provost
Marc Abdelnour
Directed by: Martin Provost
Release Date:
Theatrical: June 5, 2009
Running Time: 125 minutes, Color
Origin: France | Belgium
Language(s): French | German
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Actress Yolande Moreau, and Ulrich Ukur
Seraphine vividly recounts the tragic story of French naïve painter Séraphine Louis aka Séraphine de Senlis (1864-1942), a humble servant who becomes a gifted self-taught painter. Discovered by prominent critic and collector William Uhde, she came to prominence between the wars grouped with other naïve painters like Henri Rousseau only to descend into madness and obscurity with the onset of the Great Depression and World War II. (Music Box Films)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
What makes Seraphine, directed and co-written by Martin Provost, so exceptional is that it neither condescends to nor romanticizes its subject.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The scene is so emotionally ravishing that it breaks you apart. The peacefulness that finally descends on Séraphine in the film's final moments is more than a balm. It's a benediction.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It "explains" nothing but feels everything. It reminds me of two other films: Bresson's "Mouchette," about a poor girl victimized by a village, and Karen Gehre's "Begging Naked," shown at Ebertfest this year, about a woman whose art is prized even as she lives in Central Park.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Adam Markovitz
Moreau is bewitching -- she simply breathes her role, without a hint of vanity.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Stan Hall
Among the best of its kind, thanks in no small part to the utterly believable, vanity-free performance of Yolande Moreau in the title role.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Séraphine is one of the most evocative films about an artist I've ever seen--and in its treatment of madness one of the least condescending.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Provost and cowriter Marc Abdelnour explore the mutable boundaries between spirituality, naivete, genius, and madness, showing how the two outsiders and polar opposites cultivated a mutual understanding.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The rare movie that manages to convey the inner soul of an artist.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
What Moreau does with this role is as inscrutably moving as anything Séraphine Louis painted.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams
With exquisitely simple images and minimal dialogue, Seraphine is both haunting and humane.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
The line between madness and genius is thin. Not to mention more than amply explored in any number of films about tortured artists. But to look at the almost religious ecstasy on Moreau's face is to feel the artist's passion and be inspired by it.
Read Full Review >Variety Eddie Cockrell
An extraordinary performance by vet thesp Yolande Moreau in the title role.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ella Taylor
Séraphine's dependence on her patron--a cultivated but emotionally detached homosexual, who knew a fellow outsider when he saw one but came and went in her life without warning--is almost as unbearably moving as her inevitable unraveling--when money and fame cut the artist off from her creative wellsprings and drove her over the edge.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
The mystery of Séraphine de Senlis -- who died in a mental hospital in 1942 and whose work survives in some of the world’s leading museums -- is left intact at the end of Séraphine. Rather than trying to explain Séraphine, the film accepts her.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
Moving historical drama brings a fascinating chapter of art history to life.
Read Full Review >NPR Bob Mondello
Writer-director Martin Provost tells much of Seraphine's true-life story without words, lingering here on the process by which she makes paints, there on the obsessive single-mindedness she brings to her art.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
Yolande Moreau's most impressive costars are the extraordinary compositions of Seraphine Louis.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
A genuinely moving portrait of the artist as a young(ish) scullery maid.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
It's a movie about a scrubwoman who paints - so don't expect lots of sex scenes or car chases. Just expect a great performance by Moreau, who will convince you that she painted every one of those paintings - and lived them all before she painted them.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole
We don't get a good look at a painting until 35 minutes into the film biography of Séraphine de Senlis, the early 20th-century French painter discovered by German art collector Wilhelm Uhde. The film Séraphine is not about paintings.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It is an actors' showcase, without being showy, and Moreau and Tukur reveal radically different personalities with just enough in common to make things interesting.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
Séraphine is far more powerful when it lingers on Louis at work.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Joel B gave it a3:
This was a slow, boring movie - and I love art, the process of creating art, and good movies. It tried to present accurately who Seraphine was but by not going beyond what it knew, it portrayed a woman's outside with no sense of what was inside. It would have been a better movie, if had been moring daring and given us some significant inner thoughts and feelings even if they were technically fictional. By the way, the expert who spoke after the showing I saw, admitted that as far as she knew the only real thing about the whole movie were the paintings. I've been amazed that no critic has given this movie a poor review - what were they thinking?
lauren h gave it a9:
Brilliant use of lighting and cropped shots.
yumin t gave it a10:
The true story of Seraphine, her desperate poverty as a maid, her love of trees and water, creating swirling energies of color in her secret painting, paints mixed from blood and flowers and stolen wax, all beautifully acted, gives the movie a premier place among films about artists.
Alan W. gave it a9:
Beautifully shot and brilliantly acted.
