When was the last time you heard someone say to their significant other, "Hey, let's go out and see a movie about the most mysterious painting of 17th century artist Johannes Vermeer – it's set in Delft, Holland and there is hardly any dialogue in it at all?" If you never have, director Peter Webber's Girl With A Pearl Earring is a good reason why.
Girl, adapted by Olivia Hetreed from Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel of the same name, is spectacular merely as an extended visual presentation. Like Raging Bull, any frame from the film could be extrapolated and hung on the wall as art. But Webber, fresh off his career as an editor, should perhaps remember that the visual half of the film doesn't mean squat without, you know, that whole talking part.
Scarlett Johansson plays Griet, a 17-year-old servant in the house of Vermeer (Colin Firth). Forget that sad sack of a writer, all tears and pained glances, that Firth portrayed in Love Actually – Firth's version of Vermeer crackles with bundled sensuality and, even if the real Vermeer was probably nothing like this, it's fun to watch. Johansson more than holds her own. Griet is practically mute but for a few scattered sentences, but she says more with her face here than she said with her tongue throughout the Bill Murray-centric Lost In Translation. Kudos to Webber for finding a girl who eerily resembled the subject of the famous painting and still had the chops to deliver a terrific performance.
Vermeer lives under the yolk of his perpetually-pregnant wife Catharina (Essie Davis) and his boorish patron Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson). Griet, who is drawn towards Vermeer, helps the artist mix his paints and buy supplies until he one days asks her to pose for a painting. Fearing the wrath of Catharina, who knows that her husband is straying, Griet tentatively agrees to become Vermeer's muse.
Languishing pauses may be acceptable while viewing a painting in a museum, but then again, people don't have to pay seven-fifty to get into those. Webber, who should have really known better, forgot all of the visual cutting and simultaneously couldn't seem to stop cutting all the dialogue. Chevalier's book was a succulent cerebral experience, but without a running narration in the movie, the audience must rely on mere busts of Firth and Johannson to understand what's going on. The talent of both actors is considerable, but never quite enough.
In film, as in art, there are many disturbing and wonderful images. And then there's that one painting you might enjoy while idly passing by but forget about as soon as you leave the museum. Girl is aesthetically enticing but too flimsy to bother caring about after the lights have come up.
Girl With A Pearl Earring is rated PG-13 for some mild sexuality.
John Visclosky. John Visclosky is, suffice it to say, "hardly the sharpest intellectual tool in the shed," which is why he has stupidly chosen to here address himself in the third person. He's a mellow sort of guy who enjoys movies and sharing his feelings and innermost … More »
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