BRUSH WITH FAME
Hand-painted film Losing Vincent is lovely to look at, but a bit plodding
If Vincent van Gogh had ever made a movie, it might have — no, it would have — looked like this fascinating experiment by co-directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman.
The story of a man trying to understand the painter’s 1890 suicide, Loving Vincent was shot as a traditional film, then painstakingly painted (oil painted!),
frame by frame, by a team of more than 100 artists, to mimic van Gogh’s style. The effort took more than six years. Douglas Booth stars as Armand Roulin, son of postman Joseph Roulin, and part of a family that was close to the painter and appeared in many of his works.
When a letter from Vincent to his brother Theo is found more than a year after the painter’s death, Armand sets out to Paris to deliver it, only to learn that Theo had died less than six months after his older sibling.
What follows is a kind of detective story, with Armand visiting and questioning Vincent’s doctor, the doctor’s daughter, an innkeeper, a paint supplier and others, uncertain whether the suicide cause of death is even true. “What I’ve been told doesn’t add up,” he muses darkly at one point.
The rather dry nature of Armand’s investigation is at odds with the glorious style of the movie. Featuring backgrounds and even weather inspired by van Gogh’s many paintings, the film is a treat for the eyes. At times the characters seem to be scampering through the artist’s canvases.
But the style of one conversation after another, intercut with black-and-white memories and re-creations of events in van Gogh’s life, makes the story play out like a televised police procedural.
And the mostly British and Irish cast members sound out of place in the French countryside. Fans of the famed painter should enjoy, if nothing else, the unique look of Loving Vincent.