Centuries before Holland became synonymous with the export of tulips, relaxed cafe culture, sleazy porn and ‘brilliant orange’ football, the Dutch were famed primarily for their Old Masters. Vermeer and his 17th century painter chums. This film, based on Tracy Chevailer’s fictionalised historical novel, focuses solely on the creation of Vermeer’s most famous work, the eponymous ‘Girl With A Pearl Earring’.
Needless to say, the plot is quite short on incident – the artist (Firth) sees a maid (Johansson), decides that he’d quite like to paint her, then does so and, er, that’s it. But if Webber’s film is short on surprising developments, there’s still plenty of interesting interplay between the various characters. In particular, there’s the mounting hysterics at Vermeer’s dinner table involving the painter and his jealous, eternally pregnant one-time model, now wife.
As anyone who has seen Kirk Douglas’ ear-slicing antics (not this fine actor’s career zenith) in Van Gogh can testify, most art-biopics overplay the tortured artist angle, and typically boast much mugging and scenery-chomping. This one is no different, but it is comparitively restrained. Besides, you hardly think that the producers would have passed on the opportunity to include lots of intense, feral straight-to-camera stares from Colin Firth. There seem to be an infinite number of women who still tremble over his turn as Pride And Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy, and they will be absolutely transported by such spectacle.
Those not on the die-hard Jane Austin programme however, might be forgiven for assuming that Colin’s new wild-haired, proto-Byronic look is some kind of sad-dad tribute to The Darkness.
As the object of Firth’s (aesthetic) affections, Scarlett Johansson has considerably less to do. The script demands only that she should look like porcelain and gasp in girlish alarm when the master’s hand brushes against hers.
But if the film lacks depth, it still offers plenty of superficial pleasures – it looks sumptuous, and the director’s beautiful, painterly approach to light and dark is worthy of the artist it depicts. Tragic then, that anyone feeling inspired enough by Pearl Earring to skip toward the National Gallery will have missed the major Dutch Masters exhibition by only a couple of weeks.
Perhaps they should put a sign on the door saying “Orange you sorry you missed it”. Or perhaps not.