Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here, with two very different films about artists and how being a talented and creative person can also be the reason you lose your mind. It's burden I shoulder every day. Read on…
TETRO
The stunning black-and-white cinematography and the exquisite acting alone would have been enough to strongly recommend Francis Ford Coppola's latest work as a writer-director (this is his first original screenplay since THE CONVERSATION in 1974), but TETRO is one of those films where Coppola isn't afraid to let a little magic slip into the mix. While he doesn't aspire to the lofty surreal qualities of ONE FROM THE HEART or even his last film YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, Coppola does find the magic in simply being a highly emotional being and a gifted artist.
The film is about two brothers with a great many years between them and both the sons of a celebrated composer and conductor (played in color flashbacks by the great Klaus Maria Brandauer). The younger brother, Bennie (newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, who bears more than a slight resemblance to a young Leonardo DiCaprio) was abandoned by his older sibling, Angelo, when he was just a kid with a letter promising the older brother would return. An 18-year-old Bennie arrives in Buenos Aires to find his brother (played as an adult by Vincent Gallo) living with the a beautiful Miranda (Spanish actress Maribel Verdu of PAN'S LABYRINTH). Angelo has renamed himself Tetro (derived from the brothers' last name) and has begun a life for himself where no one around him knows his life story or the family secret that drove him from his home when he was 20.
The big family secret isn't that earth-shattering or all that hard to predict, but it isn't really the point of the film either. Tetro was a talented writer on the verge of success when he gave it all up after a friendship with a patron/critic friend (played by the legendary Carmen Maura) imploded years earlier. It's fascinating to watch the relationship between the brothers change, shift, grow and retract, sometimes within a single conversation. Tetro clearly loves Bennie, but something about having him stay with him is making memories of his troubled past come to the forefront of his clearly manic/depressive mind. It's clear that most of the things that interest Bennie come from his memories of the things Tetro loved (such as certain music, strange movies and writing), and Tetro is both honored and horrified by this.
I've always felt Gallo is one of his generation's most under-appreciated actors, and you can't help but be transfixed by both his eyes and his dangerous performance here. But the real find and the true surprise in TETRO is Ehrenreich, who matches Gallo in intensity scene for scene, but expresses a sweetness and likable quality. It's his fragility that makes what he does so astonishing, as he plays a young man trying desperately to hold together what little family he has left (their father is dying back home in America). The temptation is to look for parallels between this family and Coppola's own (his father was a musician as well, having written, among other things, the theme to THE GODFATHER), but I wouldn't get lost in looking for the connections. It's clear this is a deeply personal tale for the director, even without the backstory. TETRO loses its way in some of the final scenes, and the entire film might be something of an endurance test for some of the less patient in the audience, but I didn't mind the slower pace (it's a nice change this time of year). As the brothers turn one of Tetro's stories into a play to be judged as part of the festival contest, the movie gets a little too into its own head, and the self-referential nature of the work bordered on the tedious. But overall, TETRO has an energy and a maturity that only a 70-year-old indie filmmaker could bring to the work. Coppola's efforts to make truly independent film have paid off with his latest two efforts, and I'm extremely eager to see what he's got for us next. I think this is a better film than YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (which I also liked), and it's worth seeking out if only for this devastatingly fine cast.
SERAPHINE
I've seen a couple of films over the years about female painters who had to hide their gender in order to have their work taken seriously, but I think this might be the first film I've seen in which a female artist was not taken seriously because of her station in life. Set in the early 1900s, this fine French film chronicles the brief and troubled career of Seraphine Louis (eventually known to the world as Seraphine de Senlis), a self-taught painter who made her own paints and composed works of great originality. In 1912, on the brink of World War I, respected German art collector Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur) took up residences in a small Paris boarding house where Seraphine (played by the captivating Yolande Moreau) was working as a cleaning woman. She was painfully awkward around others and spent every dime she made on materials for painting alone in her small room. When Uhde happens upon one of her works, he immediately declares it a masterpiece, and he would know since he was one of the first collectors of Picasso's works, and he discovered Rousseau. Apparently untrained, or naïve, painters were becoming all the rage in Europe at the time; Uhde referred to them as "Sacred Heart Painters," and he eventually took Seraphine's work to some of the finest art galleries in the world, including the MOMA.
The award-winning SERAPHINE (it took many of the prizes at this year's French Oscar equivalent, the Cesars) is more than just a celebration of this lost artist's work. It shows how ill-equipped she was to handle any level of fame, praise or money as a result of her work. Seraphine has close ties to the local convent, and there's even some indication that she was either mentally ill or made less able to care for herself as a result of some physical or emotional trauma. Director Martin Provost doesn't attempt to answer these questions or even speculate, but the facts about Seraphine's life are documented and occasionally tragic. Still, he's taken great pains to show us how this tentative bond was formed between the artist and her patron. In her time, many never took note of Seraphine's work simply because she had no formal training and because she was a servant for hire, but the film champions those who look beyond an artist's station in life and examine the visionary quality of the art itself. In many ways Seraphine is one of the most inspirational films I've seen in quite some time, but it may not be immediately evident due to where the artist ends up by the end of the film. Ah, French films, you are so very gloomy, yet you entertain me and end suddenly.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
