Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B
Animation: B+

At first glance, the concept for Loving Vincent is intriguing indeed: as we are told in the first frame of the film, every frame (and thus including the one we are looking at) was hand painted, by a team of over 100 artists. The subsequent story they tell, such as it is, is entirely told in the visual style of Vincent van Gogh -- who is also the subject of the story. That makes this movie truly unlike any other, so there's that.

Van Gogh is seen a fair amount, but talked about much more. Co-directors and co-writers Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman use Citizen Cane as a vague inspiration in story structure, with the character Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth, getting the most screen time) talking to many citizens of the town where van Gogh died, a year after his somewhat mysterious death. Armand's dad, a postal carrier, was good friends with van Gogh, and has tasked Armand with delivering one of his final letters to a man in the town.

Each of these town characters are inspired by one or another famous figure from a van Gogh painting, brought to life. The way this was shot seems largely similar to the rotoscoping style of Richard Linklater's 2001 masterpiece Waking Life. Except here, instead of tracing over the actual footage, this time the actors shot their scenes, which were then projected onto canvases, over which literal oil paintings were painted.

The end result could have been spectacular in the vein of Waking Life, but the way the story was structured just didn't work for me. I'll fully concede that this is largely a matter of taste, and possibly even of education. Clearly anyone with a deep knowledge of van Gogh's work and life will find a far greater richness and reward to Loving Vincent (the phrasing of which, by the way, refers not to the act of loving him or his work, but to the way he signed his letters). I am not one of those people.

Furthermore, the animated brush strokes, so painstakingly rendered to mimic those of van Gogh himself, are often a distraction. Often a single frame of this movie is truly beautiful, but the way it moves when animated is often jarringly unnatural, with seemingly odd choices of colors, particularly when it comes to human skin tones. Perhaps that's just another element of typical van Gogh art?

But then there are the flashback scenes, which come with literally every conversation Armand has with the people in this town, and are always in black and white. This counter-productively mutes, if not outright nullifies, the effect of creating actual oil paintings for every frame of this movie. Who wants to look at van Gogh-style paintings in black and white? And it felt like nearly half the film's run time is dedicated to these flashback scenes.

It's a little fun, at least, to recognize the actors being depicted. Chris O'Dowd, Helen McCrory, Aidan Turner, Saoirse Ronan and more were literally costumed for the scenes they shot, and the artists render paintings of them rather than more directly mimicking the van Gogh paintings on which they are based. More fun, perhaps, than sensible: I also found this a bit of a distraction.

Aside from the visual inventiveness onscreen, the focus in the story is pretty much exclusively on conversations, and contemplation of the circumstances of van Gogh's death -- did he really commit suicide or was he shot? Unfortunately, I never found these conversations all that interesting. Again, it may be completely different for audiences with intimate knowledge of Vincent van Gogh. I can't imagine those audiences are very great in number though.

*Armand wonders how to make this movie more exciting.*

Overall: B-