Guest Author - Peggy Maddox

Someone kindly sent me the 3-DVD Scarlett Johansson Collection that contains three films featuring Scarlett Johansson:

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)
A Good Woman (2004)
An American Rhapsody (2001)

I watched them in that order and I'm glad I did. The first was the least enjoyable; the third was the best.

Girl With A Pearl Earring (2003)
Based on a best-selling novel by Tracy Chevalier and directed by Peter Webber, the film is set in seventeenth century Delft in the Netherlands. Griet, an uneducated peasant girl from a strict Protestant family, is sent to be a maid in the (presumably) Catholic household of painter Johannes Vermeer. Her parents warn her against listening to Catholic prayers.

I haven't read the novel, but the summary given at Wikipedia indicates that there is much more going on in the book than made it into the film. The screenplay by Olivia Hetreed is very slim on story.

This film was my introduction to Scarlett Johansson's looks and acting. I know that full lips have become so fashionable that some women have their lips injected with collagen. The extreme fullness of Johansson's lips in this film and in A Good Woman constantly pulled me out of the story to remark on what seemed to me an unfortunate deformity. Johansson's acting ability was difficult to judge. As a submissive domestic servant her inanimate expression was appropriate, but not very charming. Her activities were largely limited to hanging out laundry and gazing surreptitiously at Vermeer.

A fan of historical novels and movies, I watched the first several minutes of A Girl With A Pearl Earring with great anticipation. The cinematography of Eduardo Serra is superb. He manages to reproduce the light and contrast seen in the paintings of the Flemish masters. The meticulously detailed settings and the costumes bring the period to life.

Unfortunately, a movie needs more than stunning photography to succeed as satisfying entertainment. This film would have done better as a 30-minute slide show. Even the music, by Alexandre Desplat, manages to be boring.

A Good Woman (2004)
Based on Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan, A Good Woman is a mixed bag.

It takes an entertaining plot that in the original is set in the stuffy drawing rooms of Victorian England and places it in the sunny resort villas of Amalfi, Italy.

No one expects a film adaptation to be exactly like its literary source, but this one takes a very broad detour from the original. When adapting a Wilde play, to change the lines is to discard half the entertainment value of the play. To change the plot is to severely limit the other half. Wilde was the consummate playwright. Howard Himelstein would have done well to retain more of the original in his screenplay.

Likewise director Mike Barker, who is apparently British, could be expected to have a better ear for Wilde and to have cast it more appropriately. For one thing, Helen Hunt plays Mrs. Erlynne, the character who has to carry the play. Hunt has shown exceptional acting ability in a variety of parts, but this one was not for her.

Johansson carries her part a bit better. I doubt she could have carried the forceful part of Lady Windermere as Wilde wrote it, but as the sentimental Meg of the movie she does well enough. Those lips, made larger than ever with bright red lip rouge, were a constant distraction.

The English actors predictably did a better job with the lines than the Americans. Tom Wilkinson as Tuppy does an especially good job. Stephen Campbell Moore as the womanizing Lord Darlington would be quite good in a stage production of the original.

The Italian scenery is quite beautiful, but it does not contribute to the story as does the Victorian London setting of the original.

The film is not a total bust, but not to see it is no loss.

To see what they were working with, read Lady Windermere's Fan as Wilde wrote it.

American Rhapsody (2001)
Now this one is worth seeing. Written and directed by Éva Gárdos, American Rhapsody is a very good film with a compelling story and fine acting. Scarlett Johansson reveals acting ability in this one. I'll review it in another post.