Pioneering female painter Paula Modersohn-Becker is portrayed in loving, colorful strokes in this engaging German biopic. It’s a film that daubs an unexpected range of tones, from the tragically romantic to the jauntily comic, onto the canvas with free abandon. Modersohn- Becker’s naive expressionistic style wasn’t subtle, so it’s apt enough that Paula often paints with a pretty broad brush. “My life shall be a short, intense party,” declares Paula (sparkily played by Carla Juri) early on in proceedings, before announcing her ambition to leave the world with “three good paintings and a child.” It hardly needs to be said that Modersohn-Becker, the first female painter in history with a museum devoted exclusively to her work, had considerably more good work to her name when she died in 1907. Whirling and busy with incident, Paula certainly captures the intensity of her life, with its artistic escapes to Paris, flirtations with hedonism and belated sexual awakening. Guy Lodge, Variety