CEZANNE ET MOI – Review

(l-r) Guillaume Canet as author Emile Zola and Guillaume Gallienne as painter Paul Cezanne, in Daniele Thompson’s biopic CEZANNE ET MOI. Photo by Luc Roux. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures ©

The French film CEZANNE ET MOI (“Cezanne and I”) focuses on the real life-long, if sometimes stormy, friendship between a painter and an author. The “moi” in this historical drama is novelist Emile Zola, and the artist is, of course, post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. One has to wonder why the filmmakers didn’t just title the film “Cezanne and Zola.” The title suggests that the story is told from Zola’s point-of-view but while it might favor Zola’s view-point a little, the film actually spends more screen time with Cezanne, wonderfully played by Guillaume Gallienne. Zola is played by French star Guillaume Canet, and the two Guillaumes are terrific in their scenes together

Strong acting, lush visuals, and historical accuracy are the strengths of director Daniele Thompson’s CEZANNE ET MOI. Serious fans of either Zola or Cezanne, who know well their works and careers well, will relish this top-notch, polished and carefully researched biopic, but less informed audiences might find it a bit more challenging.

CEZANNE ET MOI focuses on the personal lives and relationship between the two men rather than describing their careers or works. However, CEZANNE ET MOI is so set on both presenting a historically accurate personal portraits, warts and all, of the two men and their difficult personal relationship that it skimps on presenting the art they made. The film makes many assumptions about what the audience already knows about the careers of both great artists. This may be a safe bet in France, for a more general American audiences, may pose some challenges as well as missing a chance to inform. While this approach will please well-informed fans of both the artist and the writer, those looking for a short course on either man’s professional life will find less here than they may expect.

Still, CEZANNE ET MOI deserves praise for its historical accuracy, something too rare in biopics, as the film depicts the two artists’ long but not always smooth friendship and flawed personal lives. The story is told through a series of flashbacks, from school days to old age, starting and returning to a particular point in time. At that moment, Zola is already a wealthy, successful writer while Cezanne is still struggling for recognition for his artwork, a reversal of their boyhood fortunes. The film shows the two first meeting as boys in a schoolyard, where young Cezanne rescues Zola from bullies teasing him as a “foreigner” for his Italian last name. While Cezanne’s parents were wealthy, Zola lives in poverty with his mother, the widow of an Italian civil engineer who had come to Aix-en-Provence to work on a dam but was killed during construction.

Filled with gorgeous photography by Jean-Marie Dreujou and shot in beautiful locations, the drama boasts wonderful costumes and period details, and some fine performances, especially Guillaume Gallienne as Cezanne. Director Daniele Thompson’s lavish film is wonderful to look at and one area where the film cannot be faulted is the acting. The gifted cast is perfect in their roles. Several of the talented cast are from the legendary Comedie-Francaise, including Gallienne as Cezanne, as well as Alice Pol as Alexandrine Zola and Deborah Francois as Hortense Cezanne.

Scenic Mont Saint-Victoire, the mountain in Provence in Southern France that Cezanne painted so many times, gets a brief visual moment, but Cezanne does not mention its name nor do we see one of those paintings until the end credits. One wishes there had been a little more of his paintings – beyond the ones we see him destroy when he is dissatisfied with them. We get a little more of Zola’s work than Cezanne’s. We get a little more of a sampling of Zola’s works, with a few snippets from his novels like “Nana” and references to the Dreyfus trial. Zola’s novel “The Masterpiece” (“L’Oeuvre”) about artists, sparks a disagreement with Cezanne over a character the painter inspired, a disagreement that forms a central focus of the film’s plot. But we see surprisingly little of Cezanne’s famous art works, and then mostly scenes of the artist kicking holes in paintings with which he is dissatisfied. However, the film does end with a visual treat for Cezanne fans, where a photographic image of the mountain in Southern France that Cezanne painted so often dissolves into one after another of Cezanne’s paintings of it, as the end credits roll.

There are lots of assumptions about what the audience knows about this pair’s careers but it is a delight for those who do know. The film’s devotion to historical accuracy doesn’t always work well dramatically but the narrative structure is a bigger problem, with both flashbacks and flash-forwards. The technique of repeatedly flashing back in time, and then returning to the same turbulent point in time, does not always work. It might have been better dramatically, and clearer for the audience, to have one flashback, then return to finish the conflict in that pivotal time period, and move forward in time with flash forward leaps from that point.

Despite the structural issues and assumptions about audience knowledge, CEZANNE ET MOI is a wonderful, detailed depiction of a real friendship between two artistic giants of French culture. CEZANNE ET MOI, in French with English subtitles, opens Friday, April 21, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars