Blessed Are They Who See Beautiful Things in Humble Places (From The Oxford Times)

Blessed Are They Who See Beautiful Things in Humble Places

7:50am Thursday 26th November 2009

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It's never usually a good sign when a foreign film gets a UK release several months after it drew plaudits in its own country. However, Martin Provost's seven-time César winner, Séraphine, proves an exception to the rule, as although this biopic of the French primitive artist Séraphine Louis premiered over 14 months ago, it ranks alongside Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon as the best film to reach British screens in 2009.

Yolande Moreau excels as the heteroclitic drudge, who divides her time between gracelessly skivvying around the small town of Senlis and furtively gathering the ingredients she needs for her art. She is abetted in her secret passion by local shopkeeper Duval (Serge Larivière) and visited periodically by the Mother Superior (Françoise Lebrun) of the convent where Séraphine once lodged. But she is essentially an outcast, who goes unnoticed as she communes with nature in the verdant fields and gleans the soil, animal blood and candle wax that she mixes into the paints for her gloriously distinctive images of flowers and fruit.

Local connoisseur Madame Duphot (Geneviève Mnich) considers Séraphine subnormal. But German dinner guest Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), who is leasing rooms that Séraphine cleans, spots one of her pictures and becomes her patron. Having already been an early champion of Picasso and Rousseau, he promises to introduce her to the Parisian art establishment. But the Great War intervenes and, when he returns to Senlis in 1927, Uhde and his sister Anne-Marie (Anne Bennent) are surprised to discover that Séraphine is still painting, with the encouragement of neighbour's daughter Minouche (Adélaïde Leroux).

However, the temptations and pressures of sudden fame go to Séraphine's head and she struggles to understand Uhde's reluctance to fund her increasingly lavish lifestyle as Europe plunges into the Great Depression. As a consequence, she suffers a breakdown and is consigned to the psychiatric ward in the geriatric hospital at Clermont.

Drawing parallels with the fate of Britain's Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle, this is a compelling study of deceptive appearances, perfidious celebrity and excruciating isolation. As a homosexual forced to suppress his emotions, Uhde clearly sees the despised Séraphine as a kindred spirit. But her naive style reflects her approach to life and by placing so much trust in the outward symbols of acceptance, she lays herself open for soul-crushing disappointment.

Laurent Brunet's cinematography and Thierry François's production design are superb and although he ignores the fact that Séraphine had received some basic art training in order to extol the genius of her untutored primitivism, Provost shrewdly avoids romanticising or patronising her achievement. He also solicits a magnificent performance from Moreau, who manages to be deeply moving as she transforms from being a free spirit who works into the night singing hymns at the top of her voice into a needy prima donna who is paralysed by a confused sense of entitlement and self-worth.

Moreau also excels in Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern's Louise-Michel, which is showing as part of the French Film Festival that is currently touring the UK (but not Oxford - so you'll have to venture out to the Ciné Lumière in South Kensington on 2 December).

This is a darkly comic tale about the female workers at a cash-strapped Picardy toy factory, who decide to liquidate their absconded boss. Having once offed a bank manager, Yolande Moreau is the natural choice for ringleader and she collects a $30,000 fighting fund to hire hit man Bouli Lanners. However, this trailer park security manager is singularly unsuited to the task and he sub-contracts his cancer-riddled cousin, Miss Ming. But no sooner has the dirty deed been done than Moreau discovers that the factory is actually owned by someone else and she sets off with Lanners to track them down.

As Moreau and Lanners hurtle from Brussels to Jersey, the madcap action briefly threatens to go off the rails, as Delépine and Kervern amuse themselves with some surrealist escapades that provide choice cameos for Benoît Poelvoorde (as a demented conspiracy theorist) and producer Mathieu Kassovitz (as an innkeeper with a passion for the environment). But this is eminently forgivable, as it's the anarchic vigour that makes this gleefully tasteless romp so enjoyable - right down to its dedication to the eponymous 19th-century social activist and its post-credits twist.

Essentially playing a wicked variation on Séraphine, Moreau delivers another memorable performance, with her interaction with workmates cast from unemployed textile workers being particularly engaging. Lanners does well to keep pace with her, as the story increasingly comes to resemble a Monty Python tribute co-directed by Aki Kaurismäki and Takashi Miike. Expertly photographed for maximum disorientation by Hugues Poulain, this is relentlessly iconoclastic, furiously funny and directed with a deceptive blend of dynamism and precision.

By contrast, Claude Chabrol sticks to his tried and trusted methods in Bellamy (which is showing on 5 December and, amazingly, does not yet have a UK distributor). Dedicated to Georges Simenon and Brassens, this teasing anti-thriller sees Chabrol teaming for the first time with Gérard Depardieu, who excels as the Maigret-like police inspector who can't resist investigating an insurance scam while holidaying in wife Marie Bunel's family home in Provence.

Piqued by a stranger snooping around his garden, Depardieu tracks Jacques Gamblin to a motel room, where he learns that he `sort of killed' a hobo to whom he bore a passing resemblance. Visits to Gamblin's materialistic wife Marie Matheron, masseuse mistress Vahina Giocante and DIY superstore clerk Adrienne Pauly help clear up a case in which appearances are consistently deceptive. But Depardieu is also distracted by the errant behaviour of half-brother Clovis Cornillac, whose tendency to drink, gamble and provoke exposes an aberrancy in the scrupulous sleuth's otherwise placid psyche.

Although there's something satisfyingly twisting about the central mystery (in which Gamblin plays three characters), this is as much a domestic drama as a policier. Depardieu and Bunel are devoted to each other. But while she longs to go on a Nile cruise, he hates to travel and is much less fascinated by the antics of her gay dentist and his plastic surgeon lover than she is. Moreover, he is perturbed by her willingness to excuse Cornillac for his wilder excesses and the simmering sibling rivalry adds a layer of menace that is missing from Gamblin's botched plan to fake his own death in a car crash.

With Edouard Serra's camera prowling around locations in Nimes and Sète, this is a typically atmospheric Chabrol outing that delves once more into his recurring themes of bourgeois hypocrisy and the unfathomable logic of love. There are mischievous moments, such as lawyer Rodolpe Pauly opening Gamblin's defence by breaking into a Brassens song. But this is primarily a cryptic treatise on ambiguous motivation and flawed perception that could easily give rise to a sequel.

November has become this country's busiest month for film festivals and the 12th Festival of German Films (which is based at the Curzon Soho) is always one of its highlights. By far the best picture on show there is Maren Ade's Everyone Else and it's again surprising that no one has had the gumption to secure this for a general release.

Birgit Minichmayr won the Best Actress at Berlin for her superb performance, which bears traces of Giulieta Masina in Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957) and Johanna Wokalek in Til Schweiger's Barefoot (2005). But while Minichmayr invests her character with vulnerability, she also has an eccentric spikiness that makes her relationship with introspective architect Lars Eidinger so excruciating and compelling.

Holidaying at his parents' villa in Sardinia, Minichmayr upsets Eidinger's sister by teaching her brattish toddler daughter how to express hatred before pretending to be shot and collapsing into the swimming pool. She is no less provocative with Eidinger, goading him into explaining why he loves her and challenging him to be more proactive in all aspects of his life. However, the tensions between them simmer over during a couple of evenings spent with Eidinger's onetime colleague Hans-Jochen Wagner and his pregnant, fashion-designer wife Nicole Marischka. Refusing to be impressed by either their affluence or sophistication, Minichmayr confronts Wagner about his chauvinism on their first meeting and then when he patronises her about her job as a rock publicist after she has slaved over a dinner party that culminates in both women being pitched into the pool.

But it's the hike into the hills that most exposes the fissures between Minichmayr and Eidinger, as he attempts to demonstrate the machismo she had accused him of lacking by striding out ahead, while she tries to persuade him to stop for the picnic she has prepared to prove she has a domesticated side. Whether goading Eidinger into dancing in his mother's tweely decorated sanctuary or luring him into outdoor sex after she has thrown herself out of the villa window, Minichmayr is a bundle of contradictions and provocations and Eidinger impresses simply by keeping pace with her extraordinary display and convincing the audience that, for all their chasmic differences, they are a credible couple.

Hiner Saleem also makes contrivance a virtue in After the Downfall, which forms part of the programme at the 6th London Kurdish Film Festival.

Starkly contrasting with the offbeat causticity of Vodka Lemon (2003), Kilometre Zero (2005) and Dol (2007), this uncompromising drama has more in common with the sombre Sous les Toits de Paris (2007), as it condenses the course of the 2003 invasion of Iraq into a single night in a Kurdish exile's Berlin apartment. Not content with triumphantly projecting giant images of the latest TV news bulletins on to his walls, Nazmi Kirik invites his friends to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein. He makes love to Asian girlfriend Marisa Commandeur with footage of the liberation rippling across their naked torsos. But Kirik is too distracted by this moment of history to show Commandeur any genuine affection and he is soon welcoming musicians, greeting guests and supervising the preparation of some spicy dishes to a give everyone a taste of home.

Tensions soon begin to mount, however, with a Sunni and a Shi'ite arguing over who is to blame for the 37 years of Ba'athist tyranny and who offers the country the best future. But it's the arrival of Fehmi Mohammad Salim that proves the most combustible catalyst, as he has come straight from raiding the secret service files at the Iraqi embassy, which contained conclusive proof that their friend Ferhad Feqi was a government agent. Salim squares up for a fight, but he is calmed down by the other guests, just as Kirik manages to prevent Commandeur from storming out because she feels so neglected.

Feqi's brother, Abdulselam Kilgi, is particularly horrified by the disclosure, as he had joined the Kurdish resistance following their sister's death in a concentration camp and entrusted his family to Feqi's care. Yet his wife (Yildiz Gültekin) had been arrested and Feqi informs Kilgi that he is not the father of her son (Roj Yunis), as she was repeatedly raped while in detention. If Kilgi manages not to lash out, Kirik proves less restrained and he holds Feqi down in the bath and begins punching him in the face before he realises that such violence won't change anything that has gone before.

Ending with a bloodied Feqi staggering through the streets and telling the Shi'ite and the Sunni to stop their bickering if Iraq is ever to achieve stability, this is a gruelling exposé of the dehumanising effect that Saddam's rule had on everyone who endured it. The behaviour of the guests (who are mostly played by non-professionals) is perhaps a little fraught. But there's no denying the shocking power of the revelations and the response they elicit. Yet these pale beside the horrifying images of the Anfal that flicker continuously on the walls and continue to contaminate the guests, even at the height of their victory. Gleaned largely from Ba'athist archives, the footage of torture, execution and the aftermath of the gas attack on Halabja are the most chilling. But it's also clear from the newscasts that the so-called Coalition of the Willing frittered away copious goodwill by not having a cogent strategy for peace.

Working on a shoestring, Saleem completed his hour-long picture in around a week and Bahman Ghobadi required only 17 days to make No One Knows About Persian Cats, which follows the progress of two young Iranian musicians as they race against the clock to organise a covert gig, record an album and make arrangements to perform in Europe. The winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and resembling a mumblecore hybrid of Fatih Akin's Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005) and a youthful variation on Ghobadi's own Half Moon (2006), this is a celebration of the urban iconoclasm that helped drive this summer's post-electoral protests. But while it reveals the extent to which underground culture, mobile phones and social networking sites have taught a generation of Iranians to kick against the system, this is also a cautionary tale that warns about expecting too much too soon.

Fresh from another spell inside for playing music without a licence, Ashkan Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi receive an invitation to appear in London. However, they lack the documentation to secure their passage and could do with some new bandmates. So, when they meet wheeler-dealing bootlegger Hamed Behdad at an illicit recording studio, they decide to entrust him with the details, while they write some English songs. Behdad introduces them to an ageing rascal who can get them their passports and visas and then transports them around Tehran on his motorbike to watch a range of indie groups in the hope of recruiting instrumentalists for their tour.

However, things don't go smoothly, as the musicians Koshanejad and Shaghaghi are most keen to hire aren't free and they struggle to find a suitable venue for their debut show. Moreover, Behdad proves to be highly unreliable and Shaghaghi becomes convinced that he's going to rip them off. Yet when there's a delay with the money that Koshanejad's mother is supposed to be wiring from Germany, Behdad sells his bike to pay for the fake paperwork. And that's when he sees his contact being bundled into the back of a police car.

Ghobadi can't be faulted for trying to showcase as many bands as possible in this whistlestop survey of the Iranian rock scene. The mix couldn't be more eclectic and he shoots the various electric bluesmen, heavy metalists, daff-tapping folkies, strutting rappers and indie boppers in locations as different as cellars, rooftops, sitting rooms and ancient ruins. He also frequently complements the numbers with MTV-style videos (undoubtedly the film's visual highlight) that tellingly expose the harsh realities of life under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But for all Koshanejad's awkward hipness and the scarf-clad Shaghaghi's constant fretting, the linking episodes (with their surfeit of transient characters) are rather dull. There are exceptions, such as the droll price list for black-market documents and Behdad's motor-mouthed explanation to an unseen cop why he's in possession of so many counterfeit movies. But it's only on the day of the concert, when Koshanejad and Shaghaghi track down the missing Behdad to a wild party across town, that the story's poignant human element finally kicks in.

Rounding off this whistlestop tour of capital festivals is Joji Matsuoka's Snow Prince, which is showing in the 5th London Children's Film Festival at the Barbican. Adapted by Kundo Koyama (who scripted Yôjirô Takita's Oscar-winning Departures - more of which next week), this deeply moving drama relocates Ouida's much-loved 1872 novel, The Dog of Flanders, to Japan in the mid-1930s. A treat for children of all ages, this is simply one of the most beautiful films of the year.

Much of the action is presented as a flashback after elderly Keiko Kishi receives a manuscript from a stranger. The text takes her back to her adolescence (Marino Kuwajima) when she defied strict father Teruyuki Kagawa to play with budding artist Shintaro Morimoto, who lives in extreme poverty with his grandfather, Katsuo Nakamura. One day, while they're sheltering in the watermill from the biting wind, the children find an abandoned puppy and Chibi becomes Morimoto's inseparable pal. But the well-heeled Kagawa heartily disapproves of Kuwajima wasting her time with an urchin and his dog and demands that she devotes herself to her studies and piano practice.

Moreover, he keeps inviting polite boys from her school to the house and Morimoto's growing sense of worthlessness is compounded when he loses all his money to a pickpocket after Nakamura entrusts him with an errand. But Kuwajima's mother, Rei Dan, recognises the importance of Morimoto's friendship and she allows her daughter to slip away for clandestine rendez-vous, one of which culminates in the pair going behind the scenes at a travelling circus and meeting clown Tadanobu Asano.

Morimoto is unaware that Asano is his long-lost father. But he hero worships him nonetheless and together they collect some lakeside mud that Nakamura mixes into a rich blue paint. However, the circus departs and the old man dies soon afterwards, leaving the distraught Morimoto to spend the festive season on the street. He helps put out a fire at Kagawa's warehouse, but the night will still end in tragedy.

Everything about Matsuoka's poignant picture is exquisite. The photography and period design are impeccable, while Koyama's script deftly contrasts the humble humanity of the underclasses with the stiff respectability of the militarist era. Morimoto and Kuwajima also excel, as they eschew pathos for a heartfelt naturalism that ensures this is nostalgic but never sentimental, touching but never trite. Dauntlessly acquainting younger viewers with the good that can still emerge from the harsher realities of life, this is the kind of family entertainment that Hollywood has forgotten how to make.

Finally, this week, there's Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller and Oxford-based Nicholas Abraham's excellent documentary, The Posters Came From the Walls, which is receiving a special one-off screening at the Phoenix on 1 December. Subtitled `How Basildon Ended the Cold War and Other Stories', this is a frankly astonishing account of how Depeche Mode became so cool behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s that Victory Day in Russia was rebranded Dave Day by die-hard fans because 9 May just happens to be lead singer Dave Gahan's birthday.

The perfect companion piece to Leslie Woodhead's How The Beatles Rocked the Kremlin (with which is shares a distinct lack of either prohibitively expensive copyrighted music or original band footage), this is simultaneously eccentric, engaging, touching, witty and inspirational. The title comes from an East German newspaper headline about the band's performance at a Free German Youth Concert and three of those who were lucky enough to be in attendance reminisce with a charming enthusiasm that is shared by the Muscovites who insist that the Martin Gore lyrics they heard on bootlegged cassettes of Music for the Masses (1987) and 101 (1988) did as much to bring down the Soviet Union as perestroika.

The combo's subversive cachet remains strong in Ahmadinejad's Tehran, where Peyman is following in his exiled uncle's footsteps by defying the ban on Islamic Revolution's Western music. But Depeche don't just appeal to repressed rebels. They're also the salvation of outsiders like the onetime London hobo who owes his rehabilitation to their music and the Californian teenager who treasures the moment in a concert movie when Gahan blows her a kiss in gratitude for her effusive banner. Their songs even form part of the liturgy at the church of St Edward King and Martyr in Cambridge.

Any Oxford clerics fancy using `Never Let Me Down' as a recessional anthem?

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