GAUGUIN: VOYAGE TO TAHITI IN LIMITED ENGAGEMENT AT GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER CHICAGO

CHICAGO PREMIERE OF FILM DEPICTING THE TORMENT AND TRIUMPH OF PAINTER PAUL GAUGUIN IN THE SPLENDOR OF PARADISE

 VINCENT CASSEL  AND TUHEI ADAMS AS TEHURA IN GAUGUIN: VOYAGE TO TAHITI

 FILM DIRECTOR AND CINEMATOGRAPHER EDOUARD DELUC ON LOCATION IN TAHITI

 TAHITIAN CHILDREN DISCOVER GAUGUIN'S PAINTS AS THE COUPLE ENJOYS A BIT OF SOLACE

By Dwight Casimere 

Edouard Deluc's exquisite film Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti is in  limited engagement beginning Friday July 20 at The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago's Loop. A fictionalized account of the tortured genius's phenomenal life,  the film recounts his eschewing of the Bourgeois life of 1890s  Paris and its contrasting  Bohemian culture,  

Abandoning his wife and five children in a smelly,  ramshackle loft in Paris, Paul Gauguin ventured to Tahiti. Vincent Cassel, with his deep set eyes and craggy face with lines dug in like the wood block etchings Gauguin created to depict his magical new world, gives life and breath to the artist's angst and brief moments of  joy . 

Deluc's deft directing and sweeping panoramic lens capture the all -encompassing glory of this strange new world of Tahiti and its mystical mountains, hills, and valleys. Tuhei Adam's is luminous as the artist's common law wife Tehura.

 As quickly as Gauguin discovers his paradise found it becomes paradise lost in a devolution of jealousy, poverty and Ill health. The demons that at once drove him to the brink of destruction simultaneously fueled his painterly genius. It is an arresting paradox that is captured with excruciating  clarity in Deluc's captivating film.

Despite being in French and Tahitian with English subtitles, the emotions in the film are conveyed so precisely in both the scenic visuals and in  the actor's expressions and gestures, the viewer quickly becomes  immersed in Gauguin's troubled psyche and glorious milieu. So transparent are the emotional portrayals that almost no translation is necessary.

Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti is at once a recounting of one man's heroic journey of self-discovery and an artist's rendering of our own inner longings and desires. For showtimes and ticket information visit siskelfilmcenter