by John P. Meyer

Between the Great War and the Great Depression, life comes down hard on an artist with too much passion for her own good.

Martin Provost's painterly biopic Séraphine is a leisurely 122-minute cinematic meditation on genius, passion, compulsion, and madness, as embodied in the person of Séraphine Louis. Known after her discovery by the art world as Séraphine de Senlis, she spent the greater part of her life working as a domestic servant -- scrubbing floors and cleaning laundry in order to scrape a few sous together.

Unbeknownst to anyone (for a time, at least), Séraphine spent most of her nighttime hours painting instead of sleeping. As dramatized in the film, she was an expert (and larcenous) scrounger, scavenging for art-making materials from both ordinary and unlikely sources. In order to replenish her supply of candles for purposes of lighting her one-room garret, for instance, she surreptitiously pilfered wax from offertory votives at the local church. She crafted her own paints from organic materials of various sorts, and purchased other essential supplies with funds diverted from her overdue rent money.

Thanks to Laurent Brunet's gorgeous cinematography -- not to mention the verdant French countryside chosen for filming -- stout, homely Séraphine (portrayed unselfconsciously by Yolande Moreau) herself appears to be wandering through a canvas by Monet or Renoir. Traveling from one menial assignation to the next, she takes time to revel in the splendor of the natural beauty surrounding her; she literally hugs trees. It's no surprise then that the subjects of her paintings turn out to be fruits and flowers and vast intertwining networks of luminous leaves.

When she's painting late at night or grinding the ingredients of her pigments together with mortar and pestle, Séraphine becomes ecstatic, accompanying her creative endeavors with songs of praise to the Catholic saints. She uses fingers as much as brushes (they are, after all, in plentiful supply) and often finds herself awakening in the light of dawn sprawled across her night's work, insensible as to how she's gotten there.

Séraphine takes on a housecleaning job for a visiting German collector and art critic named Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur). When Uhde discovers that the dowdy domestic swabbing his floors is possessed of an otherworldly artistic muse, he begins buying everything she has painted and encourages her to paint more, offering to pay for her supplies. Séraphine experiences a tantalizing taste of success -- and then WWI breaks out.

It's the first (and lesser) of two almost unbelievable strokes of bad luck experienced by the budding artist. The second comes years after the conclusion of the Great War, when Uhde reestablishes contact with Séraphine and begins a full-fledged sponsorship of the artist. She rents extravagant rooms and begins turning out magnificent large canvasses, which prove astonishing to all who view them. Just as the date of her Paris gallery showing approaches, a global economic depression sets in, affecting even her rich German patron. Disappointed and uncomprehending of big picture events, Séraphine retreats into the labyrinth of her troubled mind and loses her way.

Don McLean tunefully observed that the world was never meant for one as beautiful as Vincent Van Gogh. Likewise, Séraphine -- a creature of single-minded artistic passion -- seems not to have been meant for a world of such complexity as this one.

Director/writer Provost, cinematographer Brunet, and actress Moreau each won Césars (the French equivalent of Oscars) for their work on the film. Bravo.