If you Want to Peep into Paradise-Watch this Film

Le vase de lilas

I rarely see a film that captures me like the one I watched yesterday; Séraphine, a French movie made in 2009. It tells a story in a rather straight forward traditional narrative way, of a very rare and un-traditional artist; Séraphine Louis, AKA, Séraphine de Senlis. This woman actually existed in Senlis, where she was born in 1864 and where she died in 1942.

Early orphaned she was first raised by a big sister and supported herself by doing laundry and all sorts of household chores for the middle class families in Senlis. That lead her to work and live with nuns in a monastery nearby the town. That monastery was one of the focal points of her life and here she started painting, as she claims, because of her meating her guardian angel who taught her to paint and told her what to paint.

The movie starts when she starts cleaning a house for the famous art critic, gallery owner and art collector Wilhelm Uhde. Uhde finds one of her paintings at one of Séraphine's employers and Uhde's landlady. He is immediately attracted to the beautiful painting of apples made in style which is both totally new and orginal and at the same time resembles Mediaeval art; especially rose windows in cathedrals.

She used a very powerful, lucid paint of which she never revealed the secret, taht gave the paintings translucent qualities and made them look like windows into paradise. Uhde was infatuated by her art and they became friends. The Movie depicts their friendship and their diffrent charcters in such a remarkably well tuned manner that I can't compare it to anything I've seen on the screen so far. There is no hint of sexuality only this deep understanding and respect. Séraphine advices the preoccupied Uhde to take his problems to the birds and the trees as she does, and she offers him her home brewed "energy-wine" when news of the Great War coming up, depresses him.


That war tears Europe apart, and by that Séraphine and Wilhelm Uhde. He has to leave France and he returns in 1927. Meanwhile Séraphine goes on cleaning and doing the laundry but she also develops her artist skills. For her art is more than just art. She paints heavenly revelations and she always sings sacred hymns which she learnt at the monastery, when she paints. She wouldn't say she became more and more a master of her art, she would claim that the inspiration from above gets clearer and stronger.

The film is remarkable in so many ways, it is a movie without the masculine viewpoint. Séraphine is not for sale, she is not attractive in the ordinary movie manner, she is human and depicted with dignity as being a genius in her own right, not as being an unusally clever working class woman. All the supporting roles are also so well played. This you very rarely find in Swedish or American movies.

The real Séraphine painting the Tree of Life

Apart from Séraphine, many other central characters are women, an unusual feature in movies when you come to think of it. Those women are the sister of Uhde's, Anne-Marie and Séraphines friend Minouche. The women in the movie doesn't fight over a man, they don't long for getting married and the three female parts that stand out the most are all women with a mission in life.This is so very unusual even in movies which are supposed to have female main characters that you get stunned. Normally all boils down to a man or several men as the centre of gravity in the story. This film never loses its focal point; Séraphine and her art.

A common phenomenon in contemporary popular culture is that religion equals evil. In this movie religion is shown with respect, without exaggerated reverence. The nuns are shown as normal and kind human beings, the beliefs of Séraphine are respected throughout the movie, Even her delusions in the end are described with utter respect. This is so very rare that I only can think of a handful of movies which don't mock Christians and their religion. To find a movie that depicts religion this way must be rather difficult, I can only think of The Mission from 1986 which comes near to this one.

Une devotion

Which finally leads us to the dignified portayal of a mentally ill person in the end of the movie. I have never seen anything that comes near to it. In short; I have very rarely watched a film so beautiful, so filled with positive energy, so deeply significant in every detail, so liberating both for the mind and the soul. The film has managed to transfer the essence and message of the real paintings by Séraphine de Senlis. Her paintings are windows enabling us to peep into Paradise beforehand and so is this magnificent movie.