Char­lotte

“Only by doing some­thing mad can I hope to stay sane” are words ascribed to Char­lotte Salomon, the Ger­man-Jew­ish painter who fol­lowed in the steps of the Ger­man Expres­sion­ists, only to have her work dis­missed as ​‘degen­er­ate’ under the Nazi régime. Star­ring Keira Knight­ley as the voice of Salomon (she was also Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er), the fea­ture traces the tur­bu­lent and trag­ic life of the painter as she cre­ates her most famous body of work, Life? Or The­atre?, in the months before her death.

Begin­ning in Berlin in 1933, the artist’s native city, Char­lotte, as both a woman and a Jew, strug­gles to find recog­ni­tion as an artist. As polit­i­cal ten­sions and anti­semitism esca­late – cul­mi­nat­ing in the vio­lence of Kristall­nacht in 1938 – we jump to the south of France, where in real life, Char­lotte and her fam­i­ly found refuge in Nice. Against a back­drop of fore­bod­ing, Char­lotte paints com­pul­sive­ly, cre­at­ing a poet­ic auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal series that illus­trates the tur­moil of her inner world and exter­nal reality.

Made by the stu­dio who cre­at­ed Lov­ing Vin­cent, the film was direct­ed by Éric Warin and Tahir Rana, who bring the tragedy of Charlotte’s life into sharp focus. Julia Rosen­berg, the pro­duc­er of the film orig­i­nal­ly dis­cov­ered the sto­ry of Salomon aged 13, when she was gift­ed the book form of Life? Or The­atre? This graph­ic nov­el of sorts would pre­serve the lega­cy of Char­lotte, who is now – due to her his­toric sta­tus – sim­ply known by her first name in France.

In 2011, Rosen­berg decid­ed that if Salomon felt the urgency to cap­ture her life in paint – then an ani­mat­ed bio­graph­i­cal dra­ma would be a fit­ting cin­e­mat­ic homage to her life. Indeed, the style of ani­ma­tion loose­ly imi­tates the work of the real artist, who typ­i­cal­ly cre­at­ed expres­sive and whim­si­cal gouach­es. Depart­ing from real­ism and adher­ing to mod­ern approach­es to paint­ing, she deployed vivid and often unnat­ur­al hues of colour, with strong out­lines that offer a dis­tinc­tive naivety. Nev­er­the­less, Char­lotte tack­led heavy sub­jects mat­ters – both auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal – with unin­hib­it­ed originality.

As the film por­trays, Charlotte’s desire to paint becomes a ther­a­peu­tic purg­ing of her trau­ma – the com­pli­cat­ed back­sto­ry involv­ing her own fam­i­ly and men­tal ill­ness – as well as a trep­i­da­tion for what is to come. A gen­er­al feel­ing of malaise, or the lurk­ing pres­ence of death per­me­ates the film, at times hin­der­ing it from becom­ing an enjoy­able watch. Yet whether a sto­ry involv­ing the incon­ceiv­able real­i­ty of the Holo­caust should ever be easy to watch is per­haps a moral ques­tion for film­mak­ers. In Octo­ber of 1943, Char­lotte would be deport­ed to Auschwitz, where she died age 26, five months pregnant.

While the film ambi­tious­ly and com­pas­sion­ate­ly artic­u­lates Charlotte’s har­row­ing sto­ry, the plot is hin­dered by the fact that the film grap­ples with a myr­i­ad of com­plex themes: romance, men­tal ill­ness, the Holo­caust and the life of a strug­gling female painter, as well as the polit­i­cal cli­mate of the Sec­ond World War. Told in a lit­er­al and lin­ear fash­ion, the style of ani­ma­tion and nar­ra­tive pac­ing unfor­tu­nate­ly means that the film – with excep­tion of the final scenes – some­times los­es poignan­cy in its attempts to express the unfath­omable tragedy of Charlotte’s life.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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