Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani arrives in Paris in 1919 and enters the city's intense artistic milieu. He begins a life among painters who push boundaries, including a public rivalry with Pablo Picasso. The film frames their relationship as a central thread of his life in Paris.

Modigliani falls in love with Jeanne Hébuterne, a young French Catholic woman. Their relationship brings tenderness amid social tensions and artistic ambition. The couple envisions a future together even as hardship looms.

Jeanne becomes pregnant and the couple welcome a child into their precarious world. Jeanne's father, biased and protective, arranges for the baby to be raised by nuns in a distant convent. The separation deepens Modigliani's heartbreak and resolve.

Desperate for money to rescue and raise his child, Modigliani sees the annual Paris art competition as a possible lifeline. The prize promises security and status, even as the artist flirts with risk and self-destruction. He is driven by love, pride, and the lure of fame.

In a crowded café, Modigliani signs up for the competition while under the influence of alcohol. The moment entwines his fate with Picasso and the public spectacle of rivalry. The act marks a turning point where private passion meets public validation.

Having completed his painting, Modigliani entrusts it to Léopold Zborowski to carry to the competition and guard against interference. He then hurries home to secure a marriage license, hoping for stability for Jeanne and their child. The painting becomes the centerpiece he fights to protect.

Modigliani rushes to City Hall to obtain a marriage license before the competition starts. Although the office is about to close, the clerk agrees to issue the license on compassionate grounds, citing his art and upcoming family. This bureaucratic mercy clashes with the intensity of his artistic hunger.

Realizing he is late, he leaves the café without paying. Two men who suspect he has money follow him and assault him, leaving him bloodied and abandoned in the snow. The brutal incident underscores the fragility of an artist’s life in a city hungry for success.

Despite the beating, Modigliani's entry—a painting of Jeanne in a blue dress—wins the competition, outperforming Picasso’s cubist portrait titled Modigliani. The victory shocks Paris’s art world and elevates his reputation, even as danger and pain linger. He makes it home with the prize in hand.

Jeanne tends his wounds at home, but his condition worsens. Friends realize he needs urgent medical care and rush him to a hospital. The combination of addiction and injuries culminates in a tragic decline.

Modigliani dies in the hospital, leaving Jeanne and friends to grieve the loss. The film underscores the toll of poverty, addiction, and artistic fever on a brilliant life. His death marks the end of a volatile chapter in Paris's art scene.

Grief-stricken by his death, Jeanne Hébuterne commits suicide by leaping from a window. Her act deepens the tragedy that surrounds their life together. She and Modigliani are buried beside their unborn child.

Jeanne and Amedeo Modigliani are laid to rest together in the same grave, symbolizing the intertwined fate of their love and art. The grave becomes a quiet memorial to a life spent chasing beauty amid hardship. The unborn child lies with them in memory.