Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti

It’s a perplexing, fascinating, maddening movie, not quite like any other film biography of a famous painter, most of which tend to be equal parts ho-hum and hokum.

The film takes liberties with certain truths about Gauguin and his time in the tropics, yet despite — or maybe because of — its concoctions manages to produce a highly compelling central character.

Cassel, one of France's singular talents, delivers an absorbing performance, committing to his role on both mental and physical levels.

It’s never easy to translate visually the inner turmoil of a struggling artist, and “Gauguin” is a prime example of that.

The film is beautiful in spots, and features a believably tormented performance by Vincent Cassel as Gauguin, but unfortunately it has only a hazy idea of what it wants to be about.

What keeps the material from feeling too scattershot is the vitality of Cassel’s performance, which is full of life even when he’s not always in the best of health. He’s a much-needed charismatic center that almost manages to keep the entire enterprise together.

Content to be yet another great-man biopic, the movie would rather sanitize than probe.