Best movie of this year hands down!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Yolande Moreau, magnificent in the role of a lifetime, and Laurent Brunet's stunning photography provide - along with the artworks of Seraphine herself - reasons enough to see this film. Overall, the simple-story-simply-told feel of the movie started to loosen its grip on me at the start of its second hour. I think this may have been because the screenplay spends so much time on Uhde's rediscovery of Seraphine at that point, after the disruption of WW1. I mean no disrespect to Ulrich Tukur, who is terrific as Uhde, but I don't think it was the best use of screen time. Did we really need to dwell on someone arriving in Chantilly by car, having Uhde pick that person up in his own car, have the person - who turns out to be a journalist - interview Uhde at some length? It was interesting without being necessary, and contributed to a real dip in the movie's energy. Once Ms Moreau reappeared the film was on course again. Maybe, then, we did have to leave her in order to return to her, but in my view the time away was not handled well. Hence 6 out of 10 for a work that, on the basis of its central performance and its cinematography, and indeed on the merits of its remarkable first hour, might have reached even greater heights.

Even though I'm an art plebeian, I find most biopics about artists (painters) interesting. Well not this one. Not to say it was a bad movie. By most accounts it was a good one, with a mesmerizing performance by Yolande Moreau as the touched Seraphine de Senlis, and solid production values all around, though I'm hard-pressed to single out any one standout technical achievement. What was lacking for me was the story. Seraphine's isn't an unremarkable story, but somehow it comes across as one. It's like the director's way of storytelling is muted, to create a lack of excitement, or maybe I was too impatient with the movie, I don't know. Then again, I'm sure there's a reason why the director didn't win despite the movie sweeping most of the Cesar awards last year. I'm just saying.

The viewing of 'Seraphine' and the magnificent performance of Yolande Moreau, an actress who seems born to play this role reminded me a few other films who had on their center great artists devoted to their art up to the limits of mental sanity. Mel Ferrer's 'El Greco' and John Hurt's 'Vincent' come to my mind immediately.The first part of the film happens in the treasonous summer of 1914, in the months before The Great War starts. The famous German art collector and critic Wilhelm Uhde (acted with welcome discretion by Ulrich Tukur), one of these man who do not buy art to resell it, but sell art to buy what they love finds summer refuge from Paris and his own daemons in the French countryside. He discovers to his surprise that the aging maid in the house is a painter, and a flamboyant one, despite her lack of artistic education or of any education. The war breaks, the German becomes the enemy and is obliged to flee France where he returns only one decade later.Here happens one of the astounding scenes of the film. Ulrich comes to look for Seraphine, he does not know and we do not know if she is still alive, or if she is still willing to talk with the prospective protector who abandoned her. The scene is sordid, in a decrepit building filmed without inspiration (I believe that this is intentional, in this film only art and nature have color and beauty), the door is closed, and anything can happen at this point, even the end of the movie.The door does open and the next and final part of the film is dedicated to the sudden success of Seraphine, her lack of capacity to deal with success, he sliding into insanity. It appears that her art origins in a mystic impulse, maybe an unhappy love story, but for an artist she says, love takes other paths than it does with common people. While in need and under harsh economic pressure her faith was channeled into art, when success comes she does not stop to create (actually creates some of her best works at this time) but her mystic beliefs try to find other ways of expression, which for the rest of the world belong to insanity.Director Martin Provost makes a wise choice not to comment or direct the viewers into judging the character, but rather lets them draw their own conclusions. How can genius be judged, where is the real border between genius and insanity, aren't rather these the two faces of the personalities of many great artists? The scenes where we see Seraphine painting are magnificent, she is determined and fragile, naive and passionate.The real Seraphine Louis or Seraphine de Senlis spent the last few years of her life in a mental institution exactly at the time when her work started to be known, appreciated, and loved by the art public world wide. The beautiful last scene shows her in a serene posture, in the middle of the nature which seems to have been together with love for God the principal source of inspiration of her work. I can only hope that her end was as serene as the last scene of this wonderful film.

Seraphine Louis (1864-1942), who used the name Seraphine de Senlis (for the town where she worked), was French cleaning-woman who heared voices of angels and painted vivid flower arrangements. She was eventually closed into mental hospital. Unconventional and humanistic, Seraphine is a film which treats this obese middle-aged woman - who looked like a sweet old granny in the pictures I have seen - as a beautiful human being, unpolluted crazy visionary. Unfortunately film itself is academic with drab and ugly colours - so natural, so normal, so realistic. Subject was interesting and rich, film was well-meaning but poor.