GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. (film)

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Author: Schickel, Richard

Directed by Peter Webber

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson

Girl With A Pearl Earring is pretty as a picture--a picture, let us say, by Johannes Vermeer. Its reconstruction of 17th century Holland, where the old master painted his breathtaking portraits, is stunning. Unfortunately, the characters inhabiting this landscape in Webber's film are merely stunned. You've never seen so many people talking and walking so slowly or registering their emotions so unblinkingly.

It's possible that the lento rhythms of the film are dictated by the need to stretch what is really little more than an art-historical anecdote into a full-scale movie. Basically, all that happens in the movie is that Vermeer (Firth) entices his pretty, largely silent new housemaid (Johansson) into posing for the eponymous painting, while his patron (Wilkinson) lusts after her impotently. The film's dramatic high occurs when she finally takes off her cap and reveals her pretty hair.

All right, some obsessional undercurrents run beneath Girl's surface. The painter is obviously attracted to his model. He teaches her to mix his paint and guides her study of the play of light. Nothing comes of it, however, but glum expressions. There are a lot of cranky folks in the Vermeer household. An unhappy wife and a domineering mother-in-law do not make his life any easier, and the fact that he is a slow worker (he made only about 35 paintings in his career) doesn't help. But this material is either underdeveloped or crudely put by a director whose style is so conventional that he makes James Ivory look, by comparison, like Jean-Luc Godard. Who knew that 350 years ago the Dutch were pioneering the first Prozac nation?

PHOTO (COLOR): LIGHT PLAY: Johansson as Vermeer's famous subject

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By Richard Schickel