Depends on your levels of Christmas spirit. Nativity either glorifies the charming amateurishness of the British school play or celebrates the slapdash incompetence of the British film industry.
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11/27/09
Séraphine (2008)
89
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:82
Fresh:73
Rotten:9
Average Rating:7.5/10
Consensus: Seraphine is a well-crafted French film that effectively captures one woman's experience with art, religion, and mental illness, and features a brilliant performance from Yolande Moreau.
Theatrical Release:Jun 5, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $557,682
Synopsis: Based on a true story, Seraphine centers on Séraphine de Senlis (Moreau), a simple and profoundly devout housekeeper whose brilliantly colorful canvases now adorn some of the most famous galleries... [More]
Starring: Yolande Moreau, Ulrich Tukur, Anne Bennent, Genevieve Mnich
Director: Martin Provost
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Reviews for Séraphine
A moving, distinctly French tale, this sumptuous production is made complete with a brilliant performance by leading lady Yolande Moreau.
09/22/09
Séraphine doesn’t mess with the formula but the script allows plenty of awkward details to remain and we’re allowed to decide for ourselves if fame was a godsend for her.
11/27/09
The energies of Séraphine are devoted to examining the alchemy by which perception is transformed into vision.
06/05/09
Top CriticMoreau is bewitching -- she simply breathes her role, without a hint of vanity.
06/03/09
This true story dragged out for so long that I ceased to care.
11/27/09
Scores points for actually investing time in scenes depicting the extent to which she worked on her art.
11/27/09
Moreau’s marvellous performance captures the vulnerabilities of a woman who never dares to dream that her work might be taken seriously and who seemed to spend a lifetime poised between the call of greatness and the threat of madness.
11/27/09
As far as biopics of painters go, Séraphine is one of the very best
09/19/09
The film is a commendably worthy endeavor, and I am almost ashamed that my ingrained hedonistic attitude toward movies prevents me from recommending Séraphine more enthusiastically.
06/10/09
Top CriticNext to Demme’s expressionism and Troell’s realism, Provost’s good film is banal.
06/03/09
Boasts a raw and convincing performance by Yolande Moreau along with exquisite cinematography, but it often drags and suffers from lack of insight into the life and mind of Séraphine which keeps it from being an emotionally resonating experience.
06/06/09
We are ... made privy to the very reverie, that state of almost beatific hypnosis, where artists find sanctuary and are compelled to create.
07/19/09
Yolande Moreau's Seraphine, all doughy and unreadable at first, lets you see how the passion that enriches her work might also upend her life.
06/10/09
Top CriticIt ... works as an intimate story of one woman’s mental instability; the film commendably does not demur from recognizing that whatever powered Séraphine’s art was also responsible for her social awkwardness and institutionalization.
10/08/09
The film's complex portrait of Seraphine -- who is alternately angry, bewildered, funny, belligerent and tender -- feels as fresh and alive as her work still does.
07/24/09
It has a lyricism, passion and beauty unmatched in cinema this year.
11/27/09
...the audience is brought increasingly closer into the heart and mind of a genius whose turbulent inner life eventually envelops her conscious being.
06/08/09
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.
06/01/09
Top CriticWhimsical but wonderful - and very worthy of those awards.
11/27/09
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