Girl With A Pearl Earring

Reviewed by EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * *)



It's a mystery, a romance, a biography, a tragedy ... perhaps even a thriller, although in a very quiet and restrained and subtle way. It is a number of stories woven into one — and at the end, the mysteries must remain unresolved because nobody knows what really happened here.

Art historians know that Girl With A Pearl Earring was painted about 1665 by Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch master. It is his Mona Lisa: a young woman, wearing a smock, blue headband and pearl earring, looks back at the viewer over her left shoulder. She might be smiling. She might be leaving a room.

And that is all that anyone really knows about the painting and the model. They don't know all that much more about the artist. The mystery became the subject of Tracy Chevalier's 1998 novel, the debut by Peter webber, whose TV experience includes works on Wagner and Schubert.

Chevalier named the girl Griet (Scarlett Johansson) and had her blind father send her to work to support him, as a maid at Vermeer's house. Here, everyone is under the thumb of the painter's mother-in-law, Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt). Catharina (Essie Davis), Vermeer's wife, is about to fulfil her role — or her mother's role for her — and produce yet another baby. The painter (Colin Firth) dabbles away, not seeing how the new member of the household is upsetting the apple-cart.

Griet becomes Vermeer's assistant. He moves closer to his studio. She mixes his paints. It is not too much of a stretch to say that she becomes his muse. Which, not surprisingly, doesn't sit well with Catharina. It does, however, suit her mother, for Vermeer's rich patron, Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), has his eye on the girl, for less noble reasons than the obsessive painter. Ruijven demands Vermeer paint the girl, causing more strife in the household. Mother connives with the project for her purely commercial reasons.

Sumptuously filmed, but somewhere along the way you may begin to feel that there is not quite enough of a story here to sustain the full-length movie and engage the attention of a star cast.

DVD features include The Art Of Filmmaking, a backgrounder on bringing the era to life, the Sundance Channel's Anatomy Of A Scene which painstakingly unpicks one scene — a banquet in the Vermeer household — from editing to props like knives and forks. webber and producer Andy Paterson explain how they edited the film (it was originally three and a half hours long), shown in eight deleted scenes. Chevalier and screenwriter Olivia Hetreed also give a commentary.

* DVD, video rental 13 October