“Seraphine” Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Michaela Zanello

Winner of Best Film at France’s 2009 Cesar Awards, “Seraphine” is the beguiling biopic of Seraphine de Senlis, a deeply spiritual cleaning lady with an artistic aptitude reminiscent of Van Gogh--kind of a like the French, female edition of “Good Will Hunting.” This exquisitely crafted film stars Yolande Moreau in the title role and Ulrich Tukur as Wilhelm Uhde, the German art critic and collector who esteemed Seraphine’s savoir faire for colorful canvases.

Today, with her paintings adorning the walls of some of the most famous art galleries in the world, Serphine de Senlis is revered as a gifted artist. While working as a housekeeper at the dawn of the 20th century, however, Seraphine was regarded as a bit of an oddity by her employers and the local townsfolk. That is, until she started cleaning house for Wilhelm Uhde, the famed art collector who helped launch the careers of many notable artists, including Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau. Upon Uhde’s discovery of Seraphine’s visionary renderings of nature’s beauty, a touching, albeit unlikely friendship developed between the avant-garde art collector and his cleaning lady. While Seraphine’s standing in the art-world is largely thanks to Uhde’s championing of her, the tumultuous events that ensued during their relationship really put the resiliency of the human spirit to the test for everyone involved.

The trailer for “Seraphine” includes only very concise and spaced-out instances of French dialogue, with the trailer’s mid-section using almost no words at all. After Seraphine reveals with child-like mystique that she has her own little secrets, the middle portion of the trailer transports the viewer into Seraphine’s private world, relying on lighthearted images and a jaunty piano score to create a sense of rapture. The music’s tone soon takes on a more haunting tone, however, as the dialogue returns when a nurse asks Seraphine if everything is alright in her mind.

Suspended in a purgatory between the threshold of madness and the call for greatness, Moreau is excellent in the role of Seraphine, playing the part of the sensitive but tormented artist with transcendent lyricism. As a woman who is plagued by an intensely private spiritual struggle, the trailer is very effective at conveying Seraphine’s vulnerabilities with affecting simplicity, making “Seraphine” definitely worth a watch.

View the trailer for "Seraphine" below. What are your thoughts?