Away We Go: wonderful film about a couple trying to find a new home as they prepare for their first child together. His parents have decided to move to Antwerp a month before their first grandchild is born and so our lovely couple (we totally fall in love with them) decide to go visit their various good friends and families to find a new home state & city to be around family.
It turns out that most of their happy friends and families are dysfunctional and crazy. Follow the adventures in “Away We Go!” Do not miss this film. It’s smart, funny – loved it!
Seraphine: This is a French film that won a ton of awards. It is beautiful, quiet, lyrical, funny and heartbreaking. The film shows French painter Seraphine who created her wild colorful images of nature circa 1917 – 1937. The film shows us her unremarkable life as a floor scrubber, maid and laundress. She hustles to make a living, running from household to household – totally unnoticed. It’s when she goes home to her squalid one room apartment that we see her full glory. She is a passionate artist and often paints in a possessed swirl of movement, her hand “guided by angels.” Of course, her employers scoff at her paintings. They don’t see her artist’s heart. How could they? She gathers her supplies by picking reeds and pollen from nature, draining wax from altar candles (with a knowing wink & smile to the blessed Virgin) and running up her account at the village art supplies store.
Then one of her clients, a German art critic (he was one of the Picasso’s first buyers) sees one of her works. He visits her, asks for more examples of her works and sells them. Eventually he becomes her patron and Seraphine eventually rents out the entire floor of her building. She buys luxuries and waits for an elusive exhibit in Paris promised by her patron. She also sinks into mental illness and after a public breakdown is carted off to an asylum. Seraphine dies in that asylum but her work lives on and that gives us solace. I was touched by this film.
Try to catch it if you can.
