Power of the muse

Subtle emotions: Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth

10 April 2012

Peter Webber's debut feature is a languid affair, as studiedly brown as the Vermeer paintings that it builds on for its painstakingly detailed portrait of life in 17th century Delft. The action - such as it is - concerns the entry into the Dutch master's family of Griet (played by Scarlett Johansson), the young daughter of a humble tile painter, whom circumstance forces to become a maid.

The household is dominated by Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt, making a spirited bid for cinematic Pipesmoker of the Year), but the reality of Griet's subjugation is voiced by the painter's wife, Catharina (Essie Davis), who snaps, "Don't speak unless you're spoken to!" as Griet voices an innocent enquiry.

Beautiful, vain, and subject to continual pregnancies the way the sea is beset by tides, Catharina may have her man sexually and domestically, but she longs to possess him artistically as well. However, we soon learn that there is no meeting of eyes between them: Vermeer's vision is his own, no matter how dependent he is on his womenfolk, or his patron, the sinisterly earthy Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), a man driven, like all artistic patrons, to experience the power of creativity with grotesque vicariousness.

Sent to clean his studio, Griet soon comes to captivate Vermeer, both as muse and helpmeet, as she mixes his paints from malachite and shellac, and learns, too, the fine detail of his compositional technique.

But Vermeer is not Griet's only admirer. Van Ruijven has a taste for such virginal treats as well, and in a peculiar deal made to ensure that the painter's family doesn't suffer the ignominious bankruptcy of their neighbours, he secures Griet's presence forever.

Vermeer - as depicted by Colin Firth - is no turbulent Impressionist, or polymorphously perverse Renaissance genius, but a rather weak, tongue-tied man, whose intense devotion to his work masks a failure to engage with his life. In the rolling sensuality of a world in which masters and servants sleep cheek-by-jowl, and the wet nurse is a human equivalent of a Milton steriliser full of babies' bottles, Vermeer is a man who manages to be conspicuously absent even when he is present.

As I say, if it's a strong narrative you're after, then this isn't the film for you. Indeed, it's difficult to see how Webber could have extracted much in the way of motion and vigour from a painter whose works epitomise the stillest of lives, and the most placid of portraiture.

In The Draughtsman's Contract, the sexual turmoil of rakish English Restoration dandies was captured from a variety of surprising perspectives, and this film leans heavily on Peter Greenaway's legacy, by painting a portrait of a period's social mores from a palette of received imagery. I don't suppose too many people will be sitting in the stalls oohing and aahing when they spot this or that detail of their favourite Flemish daub, yet the pervasive sense of inhabiting a world one has only previously seen framed is uncanny.

If all of the above makes Girl with a Pearl Earring sound unappealing, then it shouldn't. Like Lost in Translation, the other film currently featuring the prodigious Scarlett Johansson, it is a mood piece; and I suspect that whether you find it to be more or less than the sum of its parts will depend on how you are feeling when the lights go down, rather than up.

Personally, I revelled in the exactitude of the period detail, from bloody pigs' heads in the meat market, to the mechanics of pre-industrial domestic laundering. It is good to see the full resources of contemporary film-making harnessed in the surface of historical verisimilitude on this small scale, instead of their usual epic expenditure.

Of course, it is a tad ironic to hail as cinematic art a production in which the plot resolution is a single still image, but it isn't one that it's necessary to dwell on.

Scarlett Johansson may have a pout that speaks of congenital collagen, and certainly she brings a sly fortitude to her role; but in a film which features such powerful supporting players as Wilkinson, Davis and Parfitt, I couldn't say that she stood out any more that Firth. Still, perhaps this very febrile quality to their interaction was also one of the film's strengths.

In the most heightened scene, Griet tears herself away from a particularly intimate moment of depiction at the hands of Vermeer, to throw herself into the arms of Pieter (Cillian Murphy), the butcher's boy who is wooing her. The implication that being beautifully portrayed is as acutely sensual as being made love to is what ties the whole conceit together most prettily.

Girl With A Pearl Earring
Cert: 12A

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Power of the muse

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