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César Award-nominated director Édouard Deluc teams with the incomparable Vincent Cassel for Gauguin. Here, Cassel takes on the colossal task of playing renowned French post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin during his self-imposed exile in Polynesia in 1891; a period that coincided with the creation of some of the artist’s most lauded works.
Suffering under the weight of what he feels are the constricting mores and stultifying political climate of bourgeois Paris, Gauguin moves to the island of Tahiti, intenton re-discovering his artistic motivation. While immersed in the South Pacific, he experiences solitude, poverty and sickness but also – thanks to a young and captivatingly beautiful ingénue, Téhura (played by newcomer Tuheï Adams) – unrestrained passion and love, which adds fuel to his creative fire.
Wonderfully photographed to capture the rich, exquisite colours of Tahiti that so stimulated Gauguin, Cassel brings a mesmerising screen aura and irrefutable originality to the fore in what is a provocative examination of Gauguin’s experiences with colonialism and sexuality, and the lasting impact on his art.
French & Polynesian with English subtitles
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