Loving Vincent

Seven years in the making and composed of some 65,000 frames produced by 120-odd artists, Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's portrait of Vincent Van Gogh is billed as "the world's first fully painted feature film". As labours of love go, it's peerless and the way the co-directors slip some 130 Van Gogh canvases into the action often feels inspired. But, as biography, this audacious project is somewhat unreliable, as frequent sitter Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) explores the theory that Van Gogh's death was murder not suicide. The shifts between ravishing everyday colour and the monochrome Citizen Kane-like flashbacks are neatly handled, as Roulin questions the painter's acquaintances in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise. But purists will be troubled by the pseudo-rotoscopic technique that seems so completely at odds with Van Gogh's distinctive brand of Post-Impressionism and even those prepared to grant the film-makers a degree of artistic licence will find the novel charm of the oil-painted pastiches beginning to pall, as the psychological rawness of Van Gogh's disconcerting style assaults the senses.