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Sraphine [Canadian]

1 disc
Region 1 USA/CA (info)

A big winner at France's Csar Awards, this drama reveals the life of little-known painter Sraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau). It is 1913, and Sraphine spends her days working as a cleaning lady for German art collector Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur). He is shocked to learn that the woman in his employ is actually a brilliant painter, and he soon brings her to the world's attention, as he did with Picasso and Rousseau.
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Additional Info

Manufacturer Part Number (MPN): 4/28/2009
Credits

Yolande Moreau, Ulrich Tukur, Anne Bennent, Genevieve Mnich, Nico Rogner, Adelaide Leroux, Serge Lariviere, Francoise Lebrun
Critic Reviews

"Moreau is bewitching -- she simply breathes her role, without a hint of vanity." -- Grade: A-
Entertainment Weekly
"[The film's] energies are devoted, for the most part, not to dissecting childhood traumas or recirculating stale cultural gossip, but rather to examining the alchemy by which perception is transformed into vision."
New York Times
"What makes SERAPHINE, directed and co-written by Martin Provost, so exceptional is that it neither condescends to nor romanticizes its subject....Powered by a performance of a lifetime by Belgium-born actress Moreau, it allows us to meet this singular person on her own terms."
Los Angeles Times
"[The film] benefits greatly from Moreau's powerfully complex lead performance. The actress beautifully manages the difficult feats of illuminating the darker reaches of her character's mind..."
Hollywood Reporter
4.5 stars out of 5 -- "Its honesty and purity derive not primarily from any correspondence to the facts of her life or essence of her creativity but from the aesthetic integrity and formal unity of the movie itself."
Box Office
"Seraphine Louis was a renowned primitivist painter....Provost and Moreau emphasize their subject's earthiness..."
A.V. Club
4 stars out of 4 -- "SERAPHINE arrives from France as the year's most honored film....Moreau plays Seraphine as a straight-ahead charger, a little stooped, marching always with energy, plunging into work, not saying much, shy, but very much who she is."
Chicago Sun-Times
"[T]o look at the almost religious ecstasy on Moreau's face is to feel the artist's passion and be inspired by it."
Washington Post
Included in Chicago Sun-Times's "The Best Foreign Films Of 2009" -- "SERAPHINE is built upon one of the year's most acclaimed performances, by Yolande Moreau."
Chicago Sun-Times