Gaugin-Voyage de Tahiti

This film fails in every possible way. Even the cinematography manages to flatten the lushness of Tahiti. But the story line is worse.

One has to wonder how and why it is near impossible for modern people to reconcile that Gauguin can be both a despicable pedophile and a great artist? I guess this is the fruit of ever decreasing interest in the classics, where literature for 3,000 years did not have the difficulty we have today in portraying real or archetypical legendary persons as both great personages and contemptible.

Consider that the entire film fails to mention, even once, this "wife" was 13 years old. That his relationship with her, and the natives, is a refection of his own selfish and predatory individual colonialism. Even his abandonment of his wife and children in France, attested to as abandonment in the sourced biographies, is inverted into them not wanting to come with him.

Bitter sweet inspiration about a man who truly struggled for his art.

I've been a fan of Vincent Cassell for years and he is the only reason why I wanted to see this movie when I saw the poster in a near by theater. Cassell plays Paul Gauguin, an artist who was willing to give up everything: his wife, his 5 children, all to travel down to Tahiti in hopes that the journey would make him a better artist. While down there he stars a romance with a woman who becomes his muse.

Cassell, himself was so good in the movie. It was a mixed bag of emotions as Cassell portrays a very selfish man who give up way too much to become a starving artist holding on to the dream that he would find pure inspiration. It was indeed a struggle, but Cassell's performance also show a man who was focus on living his best life.

Another great yet low key performance was done by Tuheï Adams who plays Tehura, the muse who became the focus of many of Gauguin's painting. I felt the two of them together had enough chemistry to keep the movie going.

Overall, I went to see this movie for Vincent Cassell and I'm very stratified with his performance enough to be interested in the man he portrayed (ignoring how a movie set in the late 1800s is painting a clear picture of what Gentrification looks like today.) Plus Tuhei Adams was a pleasant bonus and I hope to see more of her.

Just gorgeous, well acted, beautifully and invisibly directed, though some seem to miss the subtle way the cinematography flattens the spaces and abstract the shapes like Gauguin's best artwork does. Cassel is mesmerizing and looks uncannily like Gauguin's self portraits. His portrayal can make us understand the he had no choice but to paint, and all costs.

The simple loving relationship between Paul and Tehura is worn down and corrupted in the same way the People of Polynesia were by sickness and greed introduced by the colonizers. The innocent playful fun, the jealousy, suspicion and pain... this film tells a story that shows there is no running away from the human condition.

Paul Gauguin has had enough of married life, of France and of misery. In the hope of a healthier and more authentic life, the painter moves to Polynesia. An opportunity for him to develop his style and become an artist with an inimitable touch. There, he also falls in love with the beautiful Tehura. The earthly paradise seems within reach...

On the plus side, a very decent reconstruction of the period, beautiful views of Tahiti and Vincent Cassel's rough but intense interpretation. On the other hand, the watering down of the subject is pretty hard to swallow. The girls (not the girl) with whom Gauguin slept were under the minimum age allowed by the law (which is not the case of the pretty actress Tuhei Adams, eighteen at the the time of filming); as for the disease that struck the artist, it was syphilis, not diabetes. It is not by embellishing things that one captures the truth of a human being.

I thought this film, directed by Edouard Deluc, had its moments but with its very methodical pacing and depressive tone can be a difficult watch. Vincent Cassel gives a fine performance as the acclaimed artist Paul Gauguin, who unable to sell his paintings in France, leaves his family in Paris to find inspiration for his work on the island of Tahiti.

There he meets the Tahitian beauty Tehura (Tuhei Adams), who, while living together, begins to pose for Gauguin's paintings and sketches. However, despite the lush atmospherics of it all, Gauguin finds himself still impoverished, in failing health, and becoming more and possessive and selfish when it comes to young Tehura. The envisioned idyllic life is slipping away.

Overall, despite the powerful performances from Cassel and the debut of Adams, the movie to me just became mostly a slog, although, at times, it seems to come together nicely, but those moments are too few and far between. Thus, just a fair rating for me.