www.list.co.uk/film DRAMA SERAPHINE (PG) 126min ●●●●●
Senlis, a small town outside Paris in 1914. By day the middle-aged and devoutly Catholic Seraphine (Yolande Moreau) toils away as a servant and washer woman. In the evenings she paints on her hands and knees in her room, using soil, candle-wax, animal blood and flowers for her vividly imagined depictions of nature. By chance, a German art dealer Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), who’s staying in Senlis, discovers one of her creations and sees in Seraphine a ‘primitive’ talent. And when he returns to the area in the mid-1920s, he’s determined to make her famous. Wisely French writer-director Martin Provost doesn’t attempt a cradle-to- grave account of his subject’s existence. From the outset this bracing portrait associates its title character with nature: she climbs trees, bathes in a lake, urinates in a field, and forages the raw materials for her artistic output. Asked why she is compelled to paint, Seraphine replies that that she is guided by her ‘guardian angel.’ Best known hitherto for her comic performances, Moreau is exceptional in the title role, and there’s fine support from Tukur, as the gay, bourgeois ‘outsider’ figure, who feels a kinship with this female outcast. Of course Seraphine isn’t the first film to explicitly connect genius and madness, but this remains an unsentimental, patiently rendered story. (Tom Dawson) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 27 Nov. GFT, Glasgow from Fri 11 Dec.
Reviews Film
COMEDY A SERIOUS MAN (15) 105min ●●●●●
If the Coen brothers’ last film, CIA comedy Burn After Reading, was as empty as Brad Pitt’s bubble-headed gym-bunny, this latest effort is as rich as anything they’ve produced in their 25 years of filmmaking. While Fargo took them back to their Minnesota roots, A Serious Man is far more specific, returning the siblings to the 1960s Minneapolis suburb of their childhood. This being the Coens, however, you’d be wise not to look for too much in the way of autobiography. Rather, just revel in their most idiosyncratic/pot-addled film since The Big Lebowski. The film follows Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor whose life begins to unravel faster than the speed of light. At work, a Korean student attempts to bribe and then blackmail him, while an anonymous letter-writer is bad-mouthing him to the tenure committee. At home, his no-good brother (Richard Kind) has come to stay and he keeps having wet dreams about his neighbour. Oh, and his wife has decided to leave him for family friend Sy Ableman (Fred
Melamed). As a result, Larry just wants to figure out why the universe is turning against him. With an almost entirely unknown cast (though look
out for a wonderful silent cameo from Coen regular Michael Lerner), this feels the polar opposite to the A- list heavy Burn After Reading (and even their Oscar- winning No Country For Old Men, which was really a nod to novelist Cormac McCarthy). In truth, it’s the Coens who are the stars here. Every detail – like the brother draining his abscess with a suction pump – has been dredged from their fertile imaginations and turned into something quite gem-like.
What impresses most though is that while A Serious Man trades in levity, it does have an earnest side to it. Unlike William H Macy’s character in Fargo, Larry’s problems are not of his own making. And his futile search for answers – quizzing Rabbis who are as bemused as we are – has an emotional pull (thanks in part to Stuhlbarg’s wonderfully even-handed performance) that perhaps only The Man Who Wasn’t There has managed in this decade of their work. (James Mottram). ■ General release from Fri 20 Nov.
HISTORICAL DRAMA GLORIOUS 39 (12A) 122mins ●●●●●
Ten minutes in to Glorious 39 and you are left in no doubt that this is a Stephen Poliakoff production. There’s the stately country pile, the lavish aristo picnic, the soaring score, a sensational cast of British talent (Christopher Lee, Julie Christie, David Tennant, Bill Nighy) and a mystery lurking within a family at war. The conflict in question is WWII and with Churchill threatening the ruling elite, shady forces are at work to halt the anti-appeasement movement stone dead in its tracks. An apolitical actress Anne (Romola Garai) steps into the fray and puts her nose in where murderous agencies don’t want it, but will she uncover the truth in time to save family and nation? With tension ripping through the screenplay, there’s more to this Poliakoff than
meets the eye, with the archetypal otherworldly dialogue being ditched in favour of more precise exchanges while the sweeping soundtrack from Adrian Johnston underpins the austere drama to perfection. He may have been away from the world of cinema for a decade, but Poliakoff still knows what it means to pierce the conscience and nudge the intelligence on screens both big and small. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Selected release from Fri 20 Nov. See feature, opposite.
19 Nov–3 Dec 2009 THE LIST 49