Girl With a Pearl Earring

Starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. Rated PG.

Opens Friday, January 16, at the Oakridge Centre

Girl With a Pearl Earring doesn't really tell you what life was like in 17th-century Holland, aside from the fact that everyone, as all historical people everywhere did, spoke with orotund English accents. But this exquisitely shot movie does say some interesting things about sexual politics circa 1665, and about how difficult it's always been to earn a living as an artist. And, with no equivocation, it shows that Scarlett Johansson's Lost in Translation breakthrough was no fluke.

Here, the 19-year-old veteran (18 films in less than a decade) plays Griet, a teenager from the artisan class driven to find employment when her father is blinded in an accident. She ends up in the house of painter Jan Vermeer, although it is really run by Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt), as determined to pull lucrative paintings out of her son-in-law as she is to turn her bovine daughter (Essie Davis, of the Matrix movies) into a baby-making machine.

Perhaps because her father was a craftsman, Griet shows inchoate appreciation of the artistic process. Or maybe this is just because Vermeer is played by Colin Firth, the thinking woman's stud muffin. Vermeer, in return, asks her to help him mix paints. In any case, this development does not go unnoticed, or unpunished, by other women of the household, particularly the eldest daughter, Cornelia (Alakina Mann), a malicious troublemaker notably neglected by all concerned.

Thins, ever mindful of the bottom line, sees that painter is inspired by maid, who has notions about light, colour, and chair placement. The family's biggest patron, a rich pig named Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), also has an eye on Griet, although his intentions are less aesthetically refined. And let's not forget the butcher's boy Pieter, played by Cillian Murphy, back from fighting zombies in 28 Days Later. Griet is distracted from his attentions by Vermeer's undefined intensity, and possibly by her own creative aspirations--unthinkable in the Europe of that time.

Johansson perfectly, almost wordlessly, embodies the dilemma of a virginal young woman who has not yet come to any real understanding of her situation but is quietly driven to challenge it. This is an infinitely subtler interpretation than the one hammered out by Tracy Chevalier, author of the bestselling but atrociously written book upon which the movie is based. The novel's Griet seems to have a scheming, protofeminist handle on everything, yet has to act dumb around her betters.

Happily, director Peter Webber--making his first feature leap from documentaries about art and science--has scrapped this approach. In the spare script by Olivia Hetreed, there are still glaring anachronisms. ("Don't get caught up in his world," Pieter advises, Oprah-like.) But the film itself is beautifully alive to contradictions of period and personality. The result, although sometimes dramatically underwhelming, effectively conveys the Eros that lurks within the justly famous painting of the title.

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