FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| FILM Artemisia Artemisia is a serviceable film - lovely to look at, mildly engrossing, but missing the extraordinary, the sparkle, the fresh perspective that might lift it above the conventions of movie romance. The film looks at the life of the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, her trailblazing entry into the male-dominated art world, and her love affair with one of the pillars of that world, Florentine artist Agostino Tassi. This last, the liaison with Tassi, is the film's real subject - in 1612, Artemisia's father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi, charged Tassi with raping young Artemisia. The Florentine was convicted, while Artemisia was shamed and even tortured during trial proceedings in order to extract a confession of her compliance with Tassi's advances. Director Agnes Merlet doesn't skimp at showing Tassi's history of debauchery, but insists that he did love Artemisia, and she him; at fault, rather, was a society that quashed female sexuality. In the film's version of events, Artemisia's passion and, indeed, Tassi's, are inextricable from their art; the two comprise a rather mutually beneficial pair. Orazio, speaking the tongue of the times, offers his daughter the high praise that she "paints like a man"; however, he can't stomach her sexual explorations - another male province - and the Artemisia/Tassi connection is severed by the court. Hustled into a marriage of convenience, Artemisia manages, nonetheless, to thrive; she becomes the first woman admitted to the Florentine Academy of Drawing and ends up in England, painting for the king. Artemisia is beautifully filmed, in rich, painterly hues, and has likable performances from Valentina Cervi (Artemisia), Miki Manojlovic (Tassi) and Michel Serrault (Orazio Gentileschi). It fails, however, to deeply explore its heroine's drive and talent, to evoke the passion behind such a wrenching work as Artemisia's "Judith beheading Holofernes," ostensibly Merlet's inspiration for researching the young woman's life. Artemisia and Tassi become, in Merlet's movie, conventional star-crossed lovers, their painting an excuse for their cinematic connection, rather than the visceral push behind it. |
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