L'artiste et son modèle

Jean Rochefort and Aida Foch present quite an unique sort of love story here as he ("Cros") invites her ("Mercè") to sit for him as a muse for his sculpture. They met because his wife "Léa" (Claudia Cardinale) encountered the girl fleeing from the Nazis in the occupied part of France. She is aspiring to make it back home to Spain, bit is weak and penniless. As she poses for the elderly man, they enquire much of each other and begin to develop a bond that is entirely complementary to his marriage, but provides him with a long lost, invigorated, inspiration to create something beautiful from his block of marble. It's a slow burn, this, but somehow it manages to create a perfect framework for an evaluation of age, certainly, but also of beauty too. A beauty that is reflected on a more viscera level by the fact that Foch is naked for a great part of the film - even when not posing; but also of the beauty of the art and the craft of working the stone - something that the lighting team must take considerable credit for illustrating in an almost halo-like fashion. The dialogue is sparing but lively when it's there, and Cardinale delivers very well as the foil to the increasingly intense friendship between the two ostensibly polar opposites. The denouement wasn't quite what I was expecting, but it worked fittingly as this attractively photographed story of affection came to a close that offered a form of redemption for all.

The Artist and the Model (2012)

This is a movie, a poem, about the existence of beauty and meaning in art, and in the life of an artist. in France during WWIL

This is an impossible subject for any movie—it demands too much be spelled out. The more obtuse, abstract, and indirect it is the better. Luckily that's where this movie tries to go. Where it fails is when it specifies its ideas. It sometimes states its wisdom. There is another better movie somewhere—not yet made—that could touch these ideas and imbue them with fullness without making it concrete. That one is the masterpiece.

In a way the fact I'm talking about this is proof that something happens here. It's a gorgeous, thoughtful movie. The old—very old—sculptor finds a young—very young— model and seems to come to life again. And in his work in these last years he finds something deep and lasting, or seemingly so. The model, in her own naive way, is actually more enriched than he is by all of this, and we see her enlightenment in small ways, even if on some level she doesn't care, not in the way the artist does.

But the artist is the center of things here, in a brilliant performance. His work, what they show of it in the movie (I speak as an artist and art historian), is pathetic and weak, and in a way that's an achilles heel here—-his huge inspiration is just another cemetery sculpture, nothing much after all. Maybe that's the hidden intention, but I don't think so.

The film is a gorgeous, simple black and white widescreen filming that is perfect for the material. The plot is simple—there are just a couple of interesting interruptions to the model and the artist working and growing together. At the end of the day and the end of life for the old man, it all presses on us as we watch—hence the pathos.

One of the stars is the French countryside itself—the olive oil on bread, the light through the trees. In a way it's a poem to a perfect existence, as much as life allows on this small planet.

See this? It really depends. It's a patient movie—requiring patience, as well. But it's beautiful and warm. And the acting is excellent. The torch is passed. The war is ending. Hope has some kind of connection to the profound, and the understanding that life is more than just the day's needs.

One review here called this film "bleak". I thought it anything but.

Marc Cros (played by Jean Rochefort) is an observer--of life, of nature, of beauty, of life's rhythms--like any true artist must be. His is a special quest, a search for inspiration and for a project that is worthy of his time. He finds a young model named Merce (played by Aida Folch) and sets out to find his inspiration.

Art might be viewed as an abstract principle or as a part of life. Cros's search is a philosophical one, but it takes place during the Nazi occupation of his homeland, France. At one point, the war invades his artistic sanctuary, but he is skilled at focusing on beauty even in such circumstances.

In the end, "The Artist and the Model" shows us the fleeting nature of inspiration, the transience and persistence of beauty, and the sometimes obsessive nature of the artist in finding his inspiration.

Movies like "Belle époque" or "Two Much", directed by Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba, were pleasant but rather shallow. But for some time (particularly since "Chico & Rita" in 2010), Trueba's cinema, while still celebrating woman and her beauty, has become more and more profound, something art lovers will certainly not complain about. Belonging to this vein,"L'artiste et son modèle" ("The Artist and the Model" in the USA), the Spanish director's latest effort, not only displays this newly acquired maturity but it is even downright close to perfection. As a matter of fact the viewers, provided they are not put off by the film's slow contemplative rhythm (but a rhythm there is), will be invited to a fascinating journey into the heart of things, into the essence of life. No less! With "The Artist and the Model", Trueba has not made just another movie, but achieved a real work of art that touches us deeply, building on a very simple but all the more powerful story: Marc, an elderly sculptor living in the heart of nature, far from the madding war (I mean World War II), finds a new muse in the (charming) person of a young Spanish refugee and undertakes the last (and certainly the most important) work of his life. And this is not just another story either, but one told with oozing sincerity and total commitment. Both sensual and philosophical, Marc's last adventure (inspired by the last experiences of Aristide Maillol working with his final muse Diana Vierny) allows Fernando Trueba to examine two themes of utmost importance to him: his love of beauty and particularly of the female body and his love of art (and of sculpture in particular). Another mark of dedication is the emotional tribute he pays to his brother, a famous sculptor who died prematurely in the 1990s. Now at the top of his art, the formerly superficial director has become able to describe life and nothing else, without relying on any easy plot twist or cinematic effect, without the obvious advantages of color (but what a luminous black and white cinematography!), without the support of a musical score (but what an enhancement of the sounds produced by nature, by objects moving, by human voices!).

Having, more than one common point with the character he embodies, Jean Rochefort is the right man in the right place. Like the aging sculptor, he is at the end of a long and successful career. Like Mercè's sculpture for Marc, this film could well be the achievement of Rochefort's life time. In any case, the French actor, who lends the old sculptor his own weary and caustic sensibility, is the right man. His female partner, Aida Folch, who plays Mercè, the young model, gives off the right dose of sensuality while managing to make apparent her intelligence and her strong convictions beyond the academic beauty of her body. In the more discreet role of Marc's longtime wife, Claudia Cardinale turns a convincing performance.

"L'artiste et son modèle" is one of the best films made on the theme of artists at work. Its message is, just like its script, both simple and powerful : "Learn to look at the world around you. Do not be content to give a sweeping, utilitarian look, try to see things and living creatures the way they are, in all their tell-tale details. Just the way Marc teaches Mercè to look at a Rembrandt drawing in one of the most fascinating scenes of the movie. A valuable lesson, both of art and life.

In this beautiful Film Noir rendition of a vignette taken from life in an art studio during World War II, Trueba succeeds in depicting an idyllic picture of an encounter between an aged French sculptor played by Jean Rochefort, and a Spanish country girl escapee from a concentration camp, who by necessity becomes an artist model, played by Aida Folch. The vignette is set in nature and is soothing despite the short background danger intrusions reminding the viewer that war is raging on.

The artist's thoughts about the female human body that he adores, his old age-related frustrations, and the initial inexperienced model, set tension between the movie stars. However, the tension is short-lived. The climax arrives in the beautiful scene in which the model while lying in bed, responds to the artist's frustrations by holding and caressing his head.

Both Rochefort and Folch play their roles brilliantly. Rochefort, as the mature experienced, and thoughtful artist, and Folch, as the country girl who accidentally finds a possible future vocation as an artist model.