'Séraphine': Prepare to be lured into idiosyncratic artist's world

The trees are something more than trees. So are the flowers and the fruit on the vine in this César Award-winning film from France. For as its title character, painter Séraphine Louis (1864-1942), follows her instincts, she lures you deep into the way she sees, channels and transforms the natural world around her.

I say "she lures" — but that's not the whole story. Actress Yolande Moreau is a wonder as the misfit outsider who drives the movie. But the film's prizewinning cinematography, score and costume/production design also do crucial "luring" of the viewer into Séraphine's idiosyncrasies of behavior and vision. And the screenplay by Marc Abdelnour and director Martin Provost (again, a César winner) provides a pulsing, rhythmic structure that lifts "Séraphine" above your standard biopic.

The central fascination of the film is the relationship between Séraphine and art dealer Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), an early collector of work by Picasso and Henri Rousseau. A gay expatriate German living outside Paris just before World War I, Uhde stumbles across Séraphine's work while she works as his house cleaner. Feverishly devout and far from sophisticated, Séraphine would have made a problematic client for the urbane Uhde even under favorable circumstances. But as the film makes clear, their circumstances couldn't have been worse.

World War I, the Great Depression, Séraphine's mental breakdown — all conspired to stop Uhde from being the patron to her that he wanted to be.

Provost does an extraordinary job of evoking the physical world the two inhabited. The gap between Uhde's Paris art scene and the provincial tastes of the village where he takes up residence is nicely targeted, too.

Still, the film belongs to Moreau. Half-derided, half-protected by her village neighbors, her Séraphine is dowdy, willful, gruff, determined: a blend of singing mystic and muttering madwoman. Little wonder that Moreau won both a César Award and a Golden Space Needle Award (from the Seattle International Film Festival) for best actress.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com