Whenever I see yet another film about an overlooked woman painter, like the recent documentary about abstract expressionist Grace Hartigan, or even the outstanding feature film Carrington, about early 20th century painter Dora Carrington, I cannot help but feel just a bit sad. How is it that these women are not more well known, that they are not household names. Sadly, I know the answer has to do with the lower value placed on almost anything produced by women, especially women who are non-conventional or marginalized or poor.

Séraphine Louis, already in her 40s and extremely pious and impoverished, happened to work as a maid in the apartment building Wilhelm Uhde rented when he moved to Senlis, France in 1914. Uhde was the German collector and later champion of "outsider", "naive" or (his preference) "modern primitive" artists such as, most famously, Le Douanier Rousseau. One one occasion he happens to notice that his landlady has an interesting painting which turns out to be one of Séraphine's, thus beginning an on and off patron/artist relationship. Uhde is fascinated by the paintings and their untrained qualities (no use of light, for example) but also by the person. In the film, Séraphine is very subtly but clearly possessed of voices and visions which drive her creative process. In fact, every part of this process is ritualized from the way she grinds and mixes the materials for her "paints", using blood from a liver about to be cooked, to her singing of religious hymns as she lays on the floor to paint each night.

When Word War I breaks out, Uhde must flee the French countryside, sacrificing his collection which was later confiscated and sold. Although he returns to France in the mid twenties, he only looked up Séraphine after he encounters her paintings at an exhibition. When he does finally find her again in 1927, she has amassed a greater number of larger and more sophisticated paintings. It is at this point that he becomes a true patron, supporting her financially, and selling her work. But as a woman touched by a passion to create, Séraphine is also beholden to mental illness which worsens as age and circumstances take their toll.

There is often a tendency to both romanticize and denigrate the artist. She is first someone who has the courage, need and commitment to live for her creative drive. Yet she is also someone who is "crazy" enough to live for and answer only to that drive. Since in the industrial capitalist model, we are all supposed to care more for material comfort, those who don't make that choice are branded as weird or eccentric or odd or just nuts. Director Martin Prevost succeeds in telling Séraphie's story apart from this propagandistic model: without overt without judgement or hysteria, without bold extremes of color and light, without sentimentalizing. Yolande Moreau (Amélie), who won a Best Actress César for her embodiment of Séraphine is a critical element in this portrait: very simply using her whole body and face to paint a portrait of this amazing woman, and one which apparently closely resembles the actual Séraphine.

I recently heard an interesting radio story about the neurobiology of spirituality. Some-one being interviewed had what he thought were visions of the Virgin Mary (curious since he was Jewish) which later turned out to indicated a brain abnormality that was corrected. Yet this man remained religious because something had been awakened in him. Séraphine Louis' story is both a sad and liberating story: the creative and transformative power of art is often a function of what we think of as altered mental state. I rather like to think of Séraphine in terms closer to that of the great Michelangelo: she, too, painted for her God, just without the Pope as middleman.

Séraphine opens June 5, 2009.

Directed by Martin Provost; written by Martin Provost and Marc Abdelnour; Cinemato-graphy by Laurent Brunet; produced by Miléna Poylo and Gilles Sacuto; edited by Ludo Troch and original score by Michael Galasso.

With:Yolande Moreau (Séraphine), Ulrich Tukur (Wilhelm Uhde), Anne Bennent (Anne Marie), Geneviève Mnich (Madame Duphot), Nico Rogner (Helmut), Adélaïde Leroux (Minouche), Serge Larivière (Duval) and Françoise Lebrun (Mère Supérieure).