Wow, I have been lucky in my selection of films to watch. Last night I saw a really
excellent French movie, Séraphine. It stars Yolande Moreau, Ulrich Tukur, and Anne Bennent. Yolande Moreau's acting in this movie is worthy of an Academy Award but it was a winner of seven Césars, the French version of the Oscars.
The film is set in the village of Senlis outside of Paris where Séraphine, a frumpy cleaning woman (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, Séraphine's life takes on new meaning when a tenant, German art critic Wilhelm Uhde (Tukur) hires Séraphine to clean for him and accidentally discovers one of her paintings that her boss had tossed aside. A champion of modern artists who is credited with early recognition of Picasso and Rousseau, Uhde is portrayed as a quiet, unassuming man who lives with his sister and a gay lover. 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. What follows, the bulk of the movie, is the the amazing rise of Séraphine, and her terrible fall. I highly recommend this excellent movie.