Artists are a famously difficult bunch: if they’re not wreaking havoc as they wrestle their demons into something fit for public consumption, then they’re plundering everyone and everything around them in service of their precious art. It may be edifying to admire the result, but would you want to grow up with one? Writer-director Danièle Thompson’s historical drama traces the decades-long friendship of the writer Emile Zola and the painter Paul Cezanne, from their schoolboy days in Aix-en-Provence, to their great falling out over Zola’s use of his friend as material, and beyond. The former is a poor immigrant with a longing for bourgeois comfort and moral clarity, the latter an angry young man eager to reject his comfortable upbringing (and just about everything else) as he charts his own path. Guess who has a happier time of it? The film is sumptuous and sensuous to behold, but a bit chilly on the heart and hazy on the mind, thanks no doubt to the prickly protagonists and the breadth of coverage. Still, there are worse things for a film to do than ask something of its viewers as it offers up its visual treats. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
This movie is not currently in theaters.