Oviri

This film, set in the mid-1890s in France, is an excellent drama based upon Gauguin's return from Tahiti with a wagon load of canvasses which no one can understand and few will buy. There appear to be three language versions, French, English, and Danish. Guess which I chose. This film is so good that it is a great pity that it is little known outside Denmark, and on the DVD box (I got it from German Amazon) it says 'only for sale in Denmark'. Frankly, I only discovered by chance that the film existed, because I was curious about the early career of Sofie Grabol, having seen her in THE KILLING (see my review). This was her first film. She was 17 when she made it, successfully playing a girl of 14 with big innocent eyes. Gauguin takes a studio next door to the studio occupied by William Molard, and Grabol plays his daughter Judith Molard, who falls hopelessly in love with Gauguin, but he only treats her like a daughter. Grabol is marvellous, and shows her great acting talent already as a teenager. Paul Gauguin is played by Donald Sutherland, and it is certainly the best performance of his which I have ever seen. He has complete command of and understanding of the character, and carries it off brilliantly. And that ain't easy! The film is really wonderful, beautifully directed, with excellent art direction and cinematography. The screenplay third draft was written by Christopher Hampton, which must have helped a lot. The film was produced and directed by Henning Carlsen, who since the death of Carl Dreyer has been the leading Danish film director. Back in 1966, he electrified the world with his stunning film of Knut Hamsun's harrowing autobiographical novel HUNGER (SULT in Norwegian), starring Per Oscarsson as Hamsun. (I was once taken to the actual flat in a run down area of Oslo where Hamsun lived when he was starving, as related in this story, by Kjell Wik, who was a Hamsun expert. Nothing like seeing where it all really happened!) In 1995, nine years after OVIRI, Carlsen filmed Hamsun's PAN with Sofie Grabol, in her second film, playing Edvarda Mack (see my review to come). From this you may gather I have always been a Hamsun admirer. Why would the Danes be interested in Gauguin? It is because his wife was Danish. Indeed, my wife and I have a self-portrait by Gauguin's brother-in-law, Frits Thaulow, a Norwegian who married the younger sister of Gauguin's wife. In OVIRI, Max von Sydow plays August Strindberg, who becomes acquainted with Gauguin during this time through the Molards. As one might expect, von Sydow is brilliant as usual. He and Gauguin have interesting discussions. Edgar Degas appears in the film, played by Yves Barsacq, but he just pops in from time to time to buy one of Gauguin's paintings, and is gone in a flash, without talking to anyone. Strange, but presumably this is accurate (?). The film shows Gauguin visiting Copenhagen to ask his wife for money, but I believe this is fictionalised, and that there was no such visit. Certainly it is true that they were bitterly estranged, and this is shown very well. The replicas of Gauguin and van Gogh paintings used in the film are very good quality indeed, and most convincing. All of the cast are excellent, and this is a truly superb film about Gauguin, which should be seen by anyone interested in art history or the lives of artists, or for that matter, by anyone who just wants to see a powerful drama about a great artist who refuses to conform and goes his own way.

Gauguin floats and struggles through life, wanting only to be back in Tahiti. There's a sweet housegirl (Sofie Grabol) who wants to be with him, and a dark-skinned girl who lives with him. Both model nude for him, and both are petite, young and slender. If nothing else, they make it very entertaining if you are so inclined.

I saw this years ago but I remember it being a charming movie, notable for Sutherland's characterization of Gauguin (with makeup and lighting, the resemblance is remarkable) and of the depiction of the delicate relationship between him and the house-girl.

The title I saw it under, "A Wolf at the Door", refers to a fable related by Gauguin in the movie, which greatly illumines Gauguin's attitude, his life and the movie. Sutherland's reading of that fable is chilling.

I would place it with the other depictions of French artists by American movies e.g.: Moulin Rouge, Lust for Life, etc. It's less flashy than those and more realistic. Pity it hasn't been released on DVD

At the onset, I should point out that I had a very strong dislike of Paul Gauguin before I watched "Oviri". After all, he abdoned his wife in kids to live a bohemian lifestyle in the South Pacific...impregnating underaged girls and taking no responsibility for the subsequent children. He was a pig. Perhaps a great artist...but a total pig as a human being. Because of this, "Oviri" is a tough sell for me, especially since it shows some of Gauguin's awfulness and there's little to admire about the man in the film apart from his art.

The story is set in the 1890s, following Gauguin's first trip to Tahiti. He's home to Denmark to see his family, hang out with an underage girl as well as renew his sexual relationship with an old mistress.

So is this well made? Yes. The actors are fine as is the direction. But despite this, it's also a slow movie that might be of interest only to a few people since, as I previously pointed out, Gauguin was a terrible man and the film didn't change this perception.

By the way, I WAS pretty uncomfortable with the underage nudity in this one, as one of the actresses was 17 and VERY naked.

Paul Gaugin returns from Tahiti to Paris in middle age, finds the going tough, watches the dissolve of his artists' cabal, meets Degas and Strindberg, has affairs with models, sells his most valuable possessions (three paintings by you know who), and hobbles off back to Tahiti. It's not a tragedy though. Gaugin winds up bitterly disappointed but hopeful, and not in the sense of a tacked-on Hollywood happy ending. He gets what he wanted, although it costs him a lot.

There's some fine acting on display. Donald Sutherland is a calm and deliberate presence. There is no artistic temperament shown, no shouting or sobbing. But his is one among many fine performances. Max von Sydow, with this hilarious fright wig, is a marvel to behold, and the tender relationship between Sutherland and the pretty young house girl, who aches for the artist's touch but who is treated like a daughter. Actually, she's splendid in the role, with a winning and quietly eager smile. She clips off a few pubes and gives them to Sutherland in a snuff box as a parting gift. There's a lot of female nudity in the movie but it's neither shocking nor salacious.

If you pay attention to such things you might notice that the lighting and photography are precisely done -- maybe not a reflection of the post-impressionists but surely the chiaroscuro owes something to Rembrandt. And there is a damned near perfect portrait of Sutherland as Gaugin, sitting alone in furry sunlight, in his dismal deserted apartment at the end.

It's a dramatic story but it takes its time. We never do see the madman van Gogh slicing off his hear, howling with pain, and running bloody through the streets. Sorry. Gaugin died in bed for undetermined reasons in the Marquesas Islands.