painter
Mr. Turner is refreshingly abrasive film
By Jenny Alvarez
Photos Courtesy
Mr. Turner is an eccentric British painter. Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies.
Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.
It’s full of eccentric, unconventional and deeply sharp moments. The main character is a creative life with great mess in his personal life. It’s impossible not to equate the ideas in the film about working and living as an artist as reflections on the filmmaker’s existence and the best part is the beautiful landscapes and wardrobe, during two and a half hours of exquisitely drawn and beautifully photographed vignettes of Turner’s life, the viewer will enjoy all the likeness of each character.
Renoir is a touch of love on a canvas
By Jenny Alvarez
Set on the French Riviera in 1915, RENOIR follows Impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet), who is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritis, and the news that his son Jean (Vincent Rottiers) has been wounded in action. When the incandescent Andrée, aka Dédé (newcomer Christa Théret,) miraculously enters his world, the artist is filled with an unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful Dédé will become Renoir’s last model inspiring some of his most renowned works including Les baigneuses (The Bathers). Back at the family home in Cagnes-sur-Mer to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden, and in the face of his father’s fierce opposition, he falls in love with this wild, untamable spirit, and as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.
This film has the complex relationship between father and son. Pierre-Auguste may be haunted by the loss of his younger wife and fearful of what might befall two of his sons serving during World War 1, but painting is still his life. Renoir includes his sense that wars shatter natural cross-border fraternities, the harshness of the class prejudices, the increasing disrespect for culture and also how his last muse was. This film is full of beautiful scenes of the countryside and some dialogues are plain but witty in some contents of Renoir’s canvasses into a visual blast of natural color and sound on the big screen full of romantic attentions in 111 minutes (A little long so you should be full of energy otherwise it could be very boring).
