Weekly round-up

An outsider artist and a reptile romance

LUSH LIZARDS: Delgo

by JOSH LOVEJOY
and JEFFREY MALECKI

Séraphine
In 1913, art critic and collector Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur) moves from Paris to the quaint town of Senlis to rest and write. Wilhelm’s circle of friends includes the likes of Picasso, Braque and, his most recent discovery, the famous art naïf painter Henri Rousseau. One day, he stumbles upon a beautiful still life of some apples and realizes to his surprise that it’s been painted by his cleaning woman, Séraphine (Yolande Moreau)… talk about hitting the jackpot! The two begin a friendship and Séraphine is urged by Wilhelm to continue painting.

The film is based on the true story of naïf painter Séraphine de Senlis, and the direction (by Martin Provost) and style are straightforward: the usual sentimental nostalgia filled with beautiful pastoral landscapes and period costumes. What really stands out is Yolande Moreau’s transformation into Séraphine.

Moreau is already known to French audiences (she won the 2004 César for best first film and best actress for Quand la mer monte) and her portrayal is exceptional. Séraphine is crazy (literally). She’s dirty, her hands and feet are bulbous, almost grotesque, she’s oppressed and her social standing offers her nothing more than floors to scrub and underwear to clean. But she is fiercely determined to paint against all odds. Moreau shows finesse and subtlety in her acting and exposes a childlike sensitivity in the character that is truly touching. The story is somewhat slow moving but the film should be seen as a master class in character acting by one of France’s finest actors. (JL)

Delgo
There’s nothing seriously wrong with this lush and compact animated feature, a fairy tale in the grand tradition, set in a magical, vaguely pre-historic land. The title refers to the name of the adolescent hero voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr., a member of the reptilian Lokni clan, who falls for Kyla (Jennifer Love Hewitt), the princess of the other clan, the haughty and winged Nohrin. Strained relations have always existed between the clans, starting with a past colonial takeover by the Nohrin, with wounds still festering.

There are problems. At times, Delgo feels too UN-y, like a dose of liberal multicultural cant, as clan councils debate the merits of various peaceful and bellicose manoeuvres. You’ll get an unrealistic taste of how easy co-operation and reconciliation can be. And certainly don’t look for anything new narrative-wise. Most scenes are rehashed, already seen in the likes of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or the Brothers Grimm. The characters, too, run the gamut of standard types, and are characteristically inconsistent. But, for each annoyance, like Delgo’s shrill sidekick (voiced by Chris Kattan), there is a positive counterbalance, such as Spig (voiced by Eric Idle), a buffoonish toady spouting hilarious malapropisms.

Delgo, the first feature from Atlanta’s Fathom Studios, boasts impressive animation and solid production values. That it conforms to its generic mould, that there’s nothing risky or novel about it, is neither shocking nor necessarily disappointing. Sometimes, especially these days, you want fairies to pop up and tell you that nothing’s changed. (JM)