This is Danielle Thompson's sixth time behind the camera in seventeen years and, as a great admirer, I have watched them all. Though a more than accomplished screenwriter with umpteen credits to her name she has, until now, always collaborated with her son Christopher when also directing but here she goes it alone. Cezanne And I is, far and away, the most sumptuous movie she has ever shot with scene after scene drenched in impressionistic imagery and in addition she has peppered the support with the finest actors such as Sabine Azema (with whom she worked on her debut directing effort La Buche). As is to be expected the philistine at filmsdefrance has savaged it which is, of course, all the more reason to welcome it.

Films about the painters of the artistic revolution in France of the last decades of the 19th century have long become a stand-alone cinematic genre. Impressionists and post-impressionists changed the course of art and reinvented the process of artistic creation. The interest related to their lives and their artistic careers was amplified by the fact that their biographies intersected creating a group dynamic, well documented by the writers of the time but also by the vast correspondence that many of them left behind. 'Cezanne et Moi', Danièle Thompson's 2016 film follows the relationship between the painter Paul Cezanne and the writer Emile Zola from their childhood in Aix-en-Provence, going through the stormy 1860s spent in Paris where the two sought their way in life and in art, until the final decades of their lives, when their personal and artistic paths parted, at least apparently, in an argument as spectacular and passionate as their friendship had been until then. For both of them, this relationship was the friendship of their lives, probably more important than their marriages and relationships. What united them was childhood and youth, what separated them towards the end was art.

'Cezanne et Moi' is more of a psychological study than a film about art. The narrative technique of flashbacks reconstructs the paths in life of the child of a banker who became a radical painter in conceptions and art (Cezanne - Guillaume Gallienne) and of the son of Italian immigrants (Zola - Guillaume Canet) who became one of the most important writers of France and an opinion journalist with great influence. The writer travels the social path of gentrification as his successful books bring him public recognition. The painter remains a marginal and a loner, he does not integrate in the social or artistic circles of the time. The friendship between the two men also seems to invade their personal lives, and director Danièle Thompson does not hesitate to describe critically and with feminist opprobrium their misogynistic attitude and the lack of sensitivity towards the women in their lives. The social and artistic environment of Paris in which the rise of the bourgeoisie took place in parallel with the radicalization of art is described in great detail, although the spectator a little careless or less knowledgeable in the history of French painting and literature in the second half of the 19th century may miss the presence and importance of some of the personalities that appear on the screen for just a few seconds.

'Cezanne et Moi' is a biopic that allows itself some freedoms, despite the repeated mention of the years and places where important scenes take place. Some of the situations are imagined, some of the lines are taken from Zola's books and articles, or from the correspondence between the two artist friends and rivals. The two actors who play the main roles are trained in the theater school of Comedie Francaise, which is an advantage because of the deep cultural understanding and respect for the personalities embodied on the screen, but also a disadvantage because we can feel a certain rigidity of the actors in relation to the camera. Guillaume Canet's Zola has more warmth, calm and prestige while Guillaume Gallienne's Cezanne plays his disorder and anxieties in a more exteriorized manner, with repetitive hysteria not always clearly motivated. Excellent makeup helps them cross ages. The cinematography is superb, especially in the scenes filmed in Provence, which insinuate, a little demonstratively perhaps, the way the landscape and light have permeated Cezanne's art. However, the artistic facets of the two personalities remain hidden. What separated the two friends in the end was art. To write his book about the artistic environment of Paris, Emile Zola used Cezanne's life and person as raw material, he exposed his friend to the public, and the painter never forgave him for that. Revolutionizing painting, Cezanne received little recognition and appreciation during his lifetime except for some of the felloew artists, and Zola joined the critical chorus at a delicate time. Only death and posterity appeased them and their names remain together for all those who came later. 'Cezanne et Moi' tells a lot about the friendship and ego clashes between the two, but too little about their art. Only towards the end of the film, in the credits, the images of nature melting in the paintings remind us of what it is really about when we say the name of Paul Cezanne.

There are two films here.

One is the lyrical short buried behind the end credits. An establishing shot of Mt St Victoire metamorphoses into the series of Cezanne's increasingly abstracted oil paintings of that mountain. As it recalls Picasso's (and later Lichtenstein's) series of increasingly abstract representations of a bull, it helps to explain Picasso's quote: "Cezanne was the father of us all." This montage of Cezanne's shows — but doesn't enunciate — his revolutionary genius as an original artist. Unfortunately, the titles distract us from the images and most viewers walk out during the sequence anyway. What could have been the core is a throwaway.

Then there's the film narrative itself, which entirely omits any explanation of Cezanne's specific importance. We see some of his major works and his exclusion from the establishment but we get no clear sense of what exactly made his art important. Even the film's title veers us away from him to the perspective of his lifelong friend Emile Zola.

Such a glaring omission or bias can only be intentional. That is, this film putatively about Cezanne and Zola is not really about their respective arts and achievements at all. Cezanne's artistic breakthrough and Zola's naturalist novels and his unfashionable defence of Alfred Dreyfuss are just alluded to, not explored. They're just part of the setting, like the top hats and cravats — and all the beautiful young nude women.

Writer/director Daniele Thompson has rather other fish to fry. To wit, the human failure of the conventionally successful male. She uses these two towering male authorities as a case study in the pathetic neediness and shallowness of the male ego. It's a feminist's anatomy of a classic bromance, with Cezanne as Butch, say, and Zola as The Sundance Kid. There's even a gal-pal to absolve them of any hint of homophilia. The working class Alexandrine passes from Cezanne's mistress/model to Zola's wife.

Thompson assumes we know of the importance of the men so she opts not to explore or explain their work. Instead she exercises the familiar conventions/clichés of the artist's dilemma. The Romantic Artist (Cezanne) flouts all artistic and social convention and seems doomed to the purity of poverty and obscurity. In the other corner, the compromised artist bends his passion to the winds of the day, to succeed in the marketplace (Zola). Their disdain is mutual.

In an invented anecdote, our heroes first meet in a schoolyard when young Cezanne rushes in to save Zola from bullies. It's love at first fight. That's how their passion will continue. With another lad who shortly disappears, the boys grow into men, at home in the Paris streets and cafes, chafing with ambition and struggling to survive.

The friendship survives through — not despite — the two men's passionate arguments and lengthy periods of separation. Zola hates but envies Cezanne's libertinism, eventually surrendering himself to his new young laundress who gives him the children his long-suffering Alexandrine couldn't. Cezanne believes that Zola exploited Cezanne's life and character to crack the bourgeoisie and find fame and fortune. To Cezanne, Zola exploited him the way he himself exploits his models.

This is a story of two successful creators who failed at life and humanity. Both are so insecure that their successes can't attenuate their self-loathing (Cezanne) or smugness (Zola). In their last scene together Zola doesn't know Cezanne hears him publicly dismiss the painter as a "genius, but stillborn." Cezanne weeps for days at Zola's death because their feeling for each other never found an acceptable form.

Though both men constantly discuss their girlfriends past and present — equally marginal — neither has any true feeling for their supposedly beloved. They neglect them in favour of fresher, shallower mistresses. The painter is enchanted with the colours and shapes of his wife's body while painting her, but shows no interest in the real woman before him. Zola puts a form of this complaint by Alexandrine into the novel that leaves his friend feeling ultimately betrayed.

The one woman artist Berthe Morisot appears briefly to flash her bosom and laugh off Cezanne's insulting proposal of a snuggle. As Thompson knows, art has always been the male's preserve, where boys will remain boys however old and successful they may become. They remain fascinated with the malleable outer form of women and too terrified to approach their individuating depths. So they save their passion for each other — carefully camouflaged and suppressed for respectability. Zola's "Cezanne and me" is really about the aloof, needy little Zola himself, hiding his airy superiority behind his literary naturalism.