MA 15+, 123 minutes
4 Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
In this intimate study of one of the founding members of the Post-Impressionist movement, the woman who featured frequently in his art has a starring role. Marthe, face framed by a large, ostentatious hat, is a quarrelsome young woman with a lust for life and robust sense of self. Pierre is so quietly and intently absorbed in his work at the easel that the camera has to go find him.
It is possible to say that Pierre Bonnard’s muse, his life partner, is the main character here. The film is at least making a case for the interdependence of artist and subject. Could the artist have existed, have done what he did, without Marthe to inspire him? It is a thorny question, but worth asking nowadays.
It was exciting times when Pierre (Vincent Macaigne) met Marthe (Cecile de France) in Paris in the 1890s. The fin-de-siecle feeling was challenging the arts in Europe to be more daring and take risks as they explored new aesthetic forms. Bonnard’s career as a painter would soon take off.
A lifelong partnership formalised in a marriage some thirty years later
Marthe, who made artificial flowers for a living and had an ailing mother she supported in secret, could have easily submitted to him. Just become another artist’s model, picked up off the street for a session in the studio that would ultimately lead to sex. According to this version of her life at least from writer-director Martin Provost, she wasn’t having any of that. Not if it wasn’t on her own terms.
Soon afterwards, however, the couple slept together before they even knew each other’s names. So began a lifelong partnership that was formalised in a marriage some thirty years later.
In 1893, after flunking one of his final law exams, Bonnard had turned to the artist’s life. It was a calling that had him struggling but not destitute. He was a part of the hugely influential group of artistic innovators, Les Nabis, and was receiving support from friends when he left Paris behind for a life in the countryside with Marthe. They lived downriver on the Seine, in a rambling old house that they rented.
There were joyful times. Swimming in the river was good for Marthe’s health for a start. And though there were plenty of boisterous arguments between them, they had the run of the house and gardens in the nude, and there were lots of opportunities for sex in the great outdoors.
Their friend Claude Monet lived nearby with his wife at Giverny. He would visit, provisioned with lunch, and paint the waterlilies that floated nearby. As the conversation flowed, there were references to creative luminaries who were simply part of their network at that time. Verlaine, Satie, Diaghilev, and it wasn’t name dropping.
De France does a fabulous job with a complex character, who has recently undergone rehabilitation
During the many years that the Bonnards were together, the image of Marthe appeared in around a third of Pierre’s paintings. From the bedroom and bathing nudes to the last years of their life together at Le Cannet in southern France. There were affairs, and Marthe could be antisocial and difficult in company, but he couldn’t live without her.
De France does a really fabulous job with her complex character, Marthe, a lusty, down-to- earth working woman who was asthmatic and prone to antagonistic behaviours, who suddenly showed in a moment of desperation that she had artistic talent of her own. A controversial figure who was long condemned by public opinion but has recently undergone rehabilitation.
Marthe Bonnard is the latest in a gallery of spirited women with under-appreciated artistic talent whose stories filmmaker Provost has revealed in films like Violette and Seraphine. In this most recent film Provost has stepped away from the intensely serious tone of some of his earlier work to allow his flair for light touch and gentle comedy to shine.
There are many pleasurable elements to this gorgeous movie experience based on a screenplay by director Provost and Marc Abdelnour. More could have been written into Pierre’s character, but the expression of Bonnard’s creative process is delicate and expressively naturalistic, as the artist works through his repertoire.
De France brings tremendous vitality to this love story between a celebrated artist and his muse. Watching on, from a seat alongside the picnickers by the Seine on sunny summer days is a bonus.
First published in the Canberra Times on 13 September 2024. Jane’s reviews are also published by Rotten Tomatoes