Seraphine - August Pgh Filmmakers Movie

Between Seraphine and Summer Hours, there was no clear preference. So let's go see Seraphine. The tiebreaker? Seraphine shows through Aug 13, Summer hours goes a week longer through Aug 20, so we'll see the one that closes sooner.

For our August first-Friday movie, Seraphine is showing at the Regent Square Theater and Summer Hours is showing at the Harris Theater. If you are planning to come, when you respond please tell me your preference: 1) Seraphine, 2) Summer Hours, 3) either one is fine, or 4) something else. I'll announce the "winner" on Wednesday, August 5.

A review of Seraphine: A breath-taking film - and winner of 7 Cesars - Seraphine boasts a mesmerizing performance by Yolande Moreau in the title role. The designation of "outsider" artists includes (among other things) untrained masters who remained unknown while alive, or those whose mental illness existed alongside a significant artistic career. In this astonishing new film about French painter Seraphine Louis, we visit another outsider. In 1914, she's working as a maid and cook by day, and painting with expressionistic fury by night. Her oracular, phantasmagoric work is ignored until discovered by a respected art collector and dealer of "primitivists." Just as Seraphine’s paintings are hailed as exceptional, her precarious mental state (like Munch and Van Gogh) begins to slip. With subtitles. (Martin Provost; France; 2009; 122 min)

A review of Summer Hours: "A near perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, a lyrical masterwork...[it’s] that rare summer movie – one that matters." --Rolling Stone. Writer-director Olivier Assayas' (Irma Vep) latest film -- one of the most celebrated films at the Toronto, AFI and New York Film Festivals -- features some of France’s finest performers, including the luminous Juliette Binoche. Three 40-something siblings’ busy lives crash when their mother, heiress to a spacious country estate and a magnificent art collection, dies at 75. But this beautiful film never turns into the expected family squabble over money or property; instead it follows the complicated business of appraising, auctioning, donating, and giving away the antique furniture and artworks. Each of them wrestles with their mother’s memory and their responsibility to the artists’ legacy. The real conflict is between the past, which must be honored, and the present, which must be lived. The film’s delicate balance of realism and poetry recalls Jean Renoir at his best. With subtitles. (Olivier Assayas; France; 2008; 102 min)