Van Gogh

Released in 1991, Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh wasn't the first movie about the illustrious painter (nor the last), and its focus is narrow (despite the near-three-hour running time): the spring of 1890, when the 37-year-old Vincent van Gogh (Jacques Dutronc), penniless and increasingly afflicted by depression and other mental problems, spent the last couple months of his life at Auvers-sur-Oise, France, under the care of Dr. Paul Gachet (Gerard Sety), himself an amateur painter and the subject of two Van Gogh oil portraits. As portrayed by the excellent Dutronc, the artist is physically wasted, his mien dour and reticent—yet he's also something of a chick magnet, as the doc's nubile and feisty teenage daughter Marguerite (Alexandra London), a Parisian prostitute named Cathy, and his own brother's wife Johanna all find him irresistible. As the story lurches along, Vincent does some painting, becomes ever more cynical and pessimistic (he describes his work as "smudges that will never be worth a cent"…oh, the irony), has some ugly rows with his brother Theo (Bernard Le Coq), and passes the time drinking, whoring, and generally living up to one character's description of him as "a great artist, but a loathsome man… (who) sows despair," before succumbing to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Overall, while this low-key film is thankfully far from the kind of overwrought, self-conscious epic it could have been (cf. Charlton Heston as Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy), it's also rather tedious. DVD extras include deleted scenes. Optional. (S. Graham)[Blu-ray/DVD Review—July 26, 2016—Cohen, 2 discs, 159 min., in French w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $38.99, Blu-ray: $55.99—Making its first appearance on DVD and Blu-ray, 1991's Van Gogh features a fine transfer and a Dolby 2.0 mono soundtrack on the Blu-ray release. Extras include deleted scenes (46 min.), interviews with director Xavier Giannoli (42 min.), costar Bernard Le Coq (32 min.), cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel (25 min.), and costar Jacques Dutronc (22 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: Pialat's slow-moving bio-pic looks nice on Blu-ray.]