This film has its own nature, almost its own reality. The sudden finish almost seems meant to make it our responsibility to comprehend the whole.

What The Artist and the Model does boast are generous performances and the odd flash of inspiration.

A whimsical black-and-white meditation upon the nature of art, set in rural southern France during the second world war.

Whether it is intended as such or not, The Artist and the Model is a rebuke to much of what we see today in the art world, either open charlatanry or tiresome self-absorption and trivia.