“Leonora in morning light” in the cinema – suffering, painting, suffering

Even if only a few ceremonies are found in the period of the turn of the times, the cultural business of the anniversaries cannot escape: In the past year, surrealism was 100 years old. This means that the publication of the “Surrealist Manifesto” by André Breton, in which the separation of art and life should be lifted, the unconscious freed, tidy with the lying bourgeois culture, is so long ago that no danger goes from his ideas. The artistry is still the attractive promise of a fulfilling, active life. But how to stir up social conditions with dear art, phew, difficult question.

The film “Leonora in Morgenlicht” by director Thor Klein and Lena Vurma strikingly expresses questions of history and society, clinging to the suffering of a single person. In doing so, he tells so much and conventionally of a surrealist that all political and aesthetic uncertainties and renewals, which surrealism meant, simply have nothing to do with this film.

Protagonist Leonora Carrington (Olivia Vinall) came from a very good house: British upper class, early 20th century, ergo not a love, but drill, ban on imagination, prescribed life, especially for girls. Leonora therefore prefers to speak to animals rather than family members, is sure of her special communicative qualifications, which is displeased. The old nanny also awakens Leonora’s faith in magical beings who, like a second world, inhabit the hostile human earth. Everyone should understand: someone like this has to become an artist! From revenge, Leonora later dreams of how a (computer -animated) hyena travels the evil dad.

However, we only learn about these biographical backgrounds in the later course of the film. He uses an Xilitla, in northern Mexico, where Leonora visits her super -rich compatriot Edward James (Ryan Gage), who can be created there a surrealistic sculpture park. An artificial paradise in the jungle, but that changes little to Leonora’s sadness: she always looks dreary, talks little, withdraws into her rooms. Her solid -looking husband, the photographer Chiki Weisz (István Téglás), does not know what to do, but snaps around a bit. The indigenous construction workers give the impression of having fun with their work for the British art collector.

We cannot really understand why Leonora ends up in Mexico so sadly. The first time and place jump into the past and old world leads to Paris: Leonora and the famous painter Max Ernst (Alexander Scheer) love each other. He is still married, but that does not detract from the passion, nor is the somewhat close dwelling. Both have a soft spot for animals, Ernst paints again and again his bird age ego »loplop«. Art production follows the sex scene, which is just so, even if it is very cliched. The fear of largely poor dialogues – Edward sees his garden as a “expansion of his own” – is true: Ernst Labert from suffering as a prerequisite for inspiration, a lecture by André Breton in a salon explains a few basic surrealistic terms for upper level and makes the Kraftmeierische and Consistent Mackertum of the artist men clearly. The gentlemen maintain an instrumental relationship with the “femmes enfants” they have so -called, yes, only this problem is unfortunately not developed so much, shown, but said and ticked off in simple sentences.

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In order to be away from the annoying bohemian to breathe scale air, Ernst and Leonora move to the Ardèche, or buy a house quickly. She has to give the muse, but the nice Max seems to be striving for eye level. Paintings come about. The two will soon be afraid that life can be so beautiful. When Germany attacks France, Max Ernst helps his anti -fascism and he is removed by the police. Leonora loses the mind, neglected. She paints a labyrinth on walls that she previously determined as a symbol for her childhood. The painter Remedios Varo (Cassandra Ciangherotti) grabs her friend and flees with her in front of the nazis towards Franco Spain. Miss Carrington happens to the border, does not notice that her friend will remain behind – cut: Leonora in psychiatry. Power shocks follow, syringes, bad pictures. How exactly she landed there does not realize that her parents finance the stay is indicated how evil the psychiatrist (Luis Gerardo Méndez) is difficult to say.

An odyssey follows for the historic Carrington, first it should go to South Africa to the sanatorium, but sets off in Portugal, gets over the Atlantic thanks to a short -term lover. The film jumps, and this is somehow typical: the indicated feminist criticism of the art world remains very limited, fascism and Spanish civil war are not even particularly noticeable as a historical background, the surreal art itself appears more as a decoration or therapy tool, shown in touching color or brushes of details. In any case, Leonora receives a schedule at her first vernissage whether the superficiality of her environment. At night, however, she welcomes a vision in the forest, a vision after a light-term traffic accident and is led from above hyena to an ancient portal to the magical world of ancestors of the indigenous people, according to which it finds its own style, the European surrealism linked to mythology motifs of its new homeland. In the credits she sits in front of a canvas.

“Leonora in the morning” is a film about an important painter, who unfortunately does not succeed in putting her work, her conflicts, her role for surrealism into pictures, but who draws a suffering full of artist clichés, so that with all the individual suffering that we see, the film remains containable: Arthouse means, which also does not try to be surrealistic in a contemporary way.

“Leonora in morning light”: Germany, Mexico, UK, Romania 2025. Director and book: Thor Klein, Lena Vurma. With: Olivia Vinall, Alexander Scheer. 103 min.