Yolande Moreau brings painter 'Séraphine' to life

Employing a minimum of speech ("we both had the desire to erase practically all the dialogue," Moreau says), Seraphine is like a silent-film heroine, her agonies and ecstasies conveyed with her eyes, her meaty, blood-engorged hands, and the palpable joy she takes in nature's ineffable bounty. In one striking moment, Seraphine walks over to a tree, hugging its trunk and pressing her cheek against the bark. It is nature, not other people, that awakens her deepest sympathies.

Moreau's performance in "Seraphine," like her turn in "When the Sea Rises," is a triumph of physicality (for which she won her second Cesar). The roles share a pleasure in the act of creation that the remainder of their dour, mirthless existences deny them. Their joy comes from accessing untapped resources of creativity, where sadness begets pleasure, which begets yet more sadness.

Sometimes, it takes a clown to make us cry, and Moreau's training as a comedian grants her the flexibility of appearing ridiculous without fear of ridicule "I love to make people laugh," Moreau says of her own work, "but I love to make people laugh with things that have some tragedy in it."

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