`Seraphine' brings late fame to artist.

Byline: Jeffrey Long

COLUMN: MOVIE REVIEW

Our world has allowed some of its creative geniuses (such as Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Nikola Tesla) to die in obscurity.

Others, like painter Seraphine Louis, have undeservedly remained there, long after death.

Yolande Moreau, who earned major awards for her directing and acting for the 2004 film "When the Sea Rises," sensitively portrays in "Seraphine" a gentle soul whose distinctive (some would say disturbing) floral paintings were spawned by her spirituality and love of nature.

Born in 1864 into humble circumstances in a village outside of Paris, Seraphine was orphaned at 7.

Not long after, she began her extraordinary visual creations in the privacy of the convent where she was employed as a servant girl.

Small door panels first serve as her canvases. Her paints are tinctures ground or distilled from plants, sauces or elsewhere.

Later, an area art critic and collector (Wilhelm Uhde, played by Ulrich Ukur), discovers and shows her creations, to favorable reviews.

Like a real-life Cinderella, the washerwoman begins a rise to unimagined glory. But will there be a fairy tale ending?

All too soon, the glass slippers of financial success and autonomy fall away.

As the spotlight of celebrity invades her private world, the world moves toward warfare, and economic conditions plummet with the Great Depression, Seraphine's already fragile character starts to erode, as do the value and collectibility of her paintings.

Her benefactor, fearful of being punished as a war deserter, flees France.

With some nuns suspecting her inspiration to have demonic associations, and villagers mocking Seraphine's solitary outings of singing and tree-climbing epiphanies, she begins a backslide toward obscurity.

But then Uhde reappears in her life. But has irreparable damage already been done, we wonder.

Seraphine's life, split between obscurity and modest renown, was divided in several further respects. It was lived half in the 19th century, preceding electricity and cars, and half in the 20th. Her life was a chiaroscuro of brilliantly inspired accomplishment and dark personal suffering.

In this film, the superstition and suspicion of locals is implied by claustrophobic, darkened interior scenes, which dramatically contrast against airy, bright country interludes that are suggestive of Seraphine's open devotion and soul turned toward heaven.

Spreading the life of an underappreciated and abused imaginative genius across the canvas of the big screen as it does, "Seraphine" will remind some of other award-winning films such as "Shine" (1996), "Angel at My Table" (1990), and "Basquiat" (1996). Here in Worcester, it may also bring to mind the shunning and ridicule that were once accorded our local visionary Robert H. Goddard, who was at times derided as the "Moon Man."

Like an impressionist painting whose greatness may best be grasped from a distance, so it is that some chronological space may have had to intervene between Seraphine and ourselves, in order that her artistic greatness find a new audience. With the release of this film, Seraphine has finally received her due measure of fame.

"Seraphine" will be shown in Room 320, Jefferson Academic Center, Clark University, at 7:30 tonight and Saturday, and 1 and 3:25 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $5.50 adults, $3.50 seniors and Clark students, faculty and staff (with ID).

`Seraphine'

* * *-1/2

Music Box Films

Rating: Not rated

Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Key to the Stars

* * * * ... Hot Stuff

* * * ... Good Job

* * ... Not Bad

* ... Never Mind

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: Yolanda Moreau stars in "Seraphine."