Beautiful Gauguin biopic lacking in human drama
The quasi-biographical “Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti” attempts to show how Paul Gauguin reinvigorated his artistic spirit on an isolated tropical island — away from the hustle and bustle of 1890s Paris. But oftentimes the experience is like watching paint dry.
It’s never easy to translate visually the inner turmoil of a struggling artist, and “Gauguin” is a prime example of that. Vincent Cassel looks the part of Gauguin, and he is always watchable, but we never get a true sense of where this gifted painter is coming from.
Director Edouard Deluc and his cinematographer, Pierre Cottereau, present an impressive canvas — Gauguin’s journeys through the lush landscape are beautifully realized — but the pretty pictures can’t disguise the fact that nothing much is going on. The tepid script tries to dream up some conflict with a love triangle, and with some religious and colonialist undercurrents, but they end up as underdeveloped strands of a story that isn’t whole.
The central relationship in the film is Gauguin and his muse, Tehura (Tuhei Adams), a 17-year-old whom the painter marries, after conveniently forgetting about his wife and kids back in France. But Tehura, though agreeable enough, is a paperthin character, and we don’t care much about this artist-muse relationship, even as Tehura seeks the companionship of another man.
Near the end, there is finally a scene with a decent spark between Gauguin and Tehura — a reminder of what’s been missing for most of the film. Indeed, when Gauguin decides to go back to France, we feel relieved, because like the painter himself, we need a change of scenery, too.