Seraphine won a bunch of Cesars – the French equivalent of the Oscars – and what’s most striking about it is the way it perfectly fits into the respectable, historical, biographical, Academy Award-friendly tradition. That said, Yolande Moreau gives an arresting, nearly wordless performance as Seraphine, the French “naïve” painter of the early 1900s who went from being a housekeeper to an art-world sensation to eventual madness. Seraphine itself is more naïve than her actual work. It’s stately, drab and conventionally framed, whereas the glimpses we get here of her paintings are dazzling and intricate.
