Artemisia

My sources tell me that this biopic of the one of the few influential female artists of the time has sacrificed a lot of historical veracity in the name of dramatic license. The film focuses on the earlier part of her life, specifically the relationship with her tutor Tassi, ignoring her rise to prominence later which is revealed in a pre-credit titles coda at the end of the film. Given that Artemisia Gentileschi is hardly a household name, even in the art world, I for one was looking forward to at least some degree of enlightenment towards the subject. That Tassi murdered his wife and child and had an incestuous relationship with sister is ignored by the film, instead playing him as straightforward love interest of little other dimension. The featured painting of 'Judith and Holofernes' was also painted some eight years after the events portrayed. Some concessions to cinematic narrative structure are understandable, but to totally disregard key facts is unforgivable. As for Artemisia herself, there is little surviving information other than a basic outline of her life, but dramatically director Merlet doesn't seem to know which way to play this. Little insight is provided for her as a person, nor for her motivation as an artist, other than that as a martyr to the patriarchal order of the day archetype. As such, she is never truly convincing as the child prodigy artist. Instead her relevance is reduced to that of a cipher in a bog-standard romantic tragedy, and the overwhelming thought as one leaves the cinema is 'So what?' On a visual level, the film is colourful, if a little conservative, at its best when taking in the rigorous working methods and assorted paraphernalia of the artists practising at the time. Unfortunately this is the sum of the informative merit in what amounts to no more than another polished yet undistinguished costume drama with the odd dash of titillatory nudity. For all that, Artemisia herself (Valentina Cervi) is certainly a little cutie and the film is never a chore to watch, but at the end of the day it merely whetted my appetite for more knowledge on the subject.

Artemisia Gentileschi was not, contrary to the impression given by this film, the first woman to earn her living as a professional painter, but she is perhaps the earliest female painter who is still well-known. (Earlier female painters such as Sofonisba Anguissola and Fede Galizia are less widely remembered today). The daughter of another famous painter, Orazio Gentileschi, she was born in 1593 and probably died at some time during the 1650s. (The exact date of her death is not known, but it is known that she was still alive and working in her early sixties). The film is not a full biography of Artemisia, but rather concentrates upon the events of her late teens, especially the trial of the painter Agostino Tassi, who was convicted of raping her.

The film has many good points. The lovely Valentina Cervi, who plays Artemisia, makes a ravishing heroine. Like another recent film about a great 17th century artist, "Girl with a Pearl Earring", it is visually beautiful and tries to capture the look of the paintings of the era. Artemisia, like many Italian painters of the early 1600s, was greatly influenced by the example of Caravaggio, especially his use of chiaroscuro, the contrast of light and dark, in order to heighten a picture's visual, dramatic and emotional impact. Some of the interior scenes in the film are clearly intended to imitate this style of painting, but director Agnes Merlet also seems to have been influenced by other artists and other artistic genres of the period, notably its still lives and landscapes. The scenes by the coast seem to have been modelled upon 17th century Dutch seascapes.

Like a number of other reviewers, however, I was disturbed by the way in which the film dealt with the facts of Artemisia's life. Now it is common for films about real historical events to take liberties with the truth, and the result is not automatically a bad or dishonest film. "Girl with a Pearl Earring", for example, which I consider to be one of the greatest films of the current decade, introduces an entirely fictitious episode into the life of a real historical figure, the painter Vermeer. It does so, however, in the service of a greater truth, in order to make some important points about artistic creativity, about social class and about friendship between men and women.

"Artemisia", by contrast, distorts the facts of its subject's life in the service of a greater falsehood. In real life Tassi was a despicable character who attempted to kill his wife, committed incest with his sister-in-law and raped a number of women; he was undoubtedly guilty of the rape of Artemisia. In the film, however, he and Artemisia are lovers, and the sex between them is purely consensual. Tassi is depicted as the victim of false accusations brought by Artemisia's father. Although Orazio loves Artemisia, and encourages her in her career, he is played by Michel Serrault as over-protective, unable to accept that his daughter could have lost her virginity voluntarily. In reality Orazio was in his late forties at the time of the events portrayed, but Serrault was nearly seventy when the film was made, a piece of casting doubtless intended to emphasise the generation gap between the passionate young woman and her puritanical old father. We also see Artemisia's famous painting of Judith decapitating Holofernes, which in reality was not painted until after Tassi's trial. Indeed, some commentators have seen this painting as representing her psychological revenge on Tassi, although it should be pointed out that this was a common subject in Italian painting at this period; both Caravaggio and Artemisia's older contemporary Galizia painted versions.

Why, I found myself wondering, did Merlet take so many liberties with history? I think that the answer was not, as some have assumed, because she simply wanted to make a soft porn film, but because she wanted to make Artemisia, who seems obsessed with drawing pictures of male genitalia, into a sexually liberated feminist heroine. The problem is that the concept of "sexual liberation" is a late twentieth century one and that it is an anachronism to introduce it into a film set in the early seventeenth century, a period when there were no reliable methods of contraception and when ideas about female honour and chastity were very different to those of today. In other respects, especially in her willingness to challenge the idea that art was an exclusively male calling, Artemisia Gentileschi can be seen as a proto-feminist, but this does not mean that it is right to see her as a woman of the 1990s transported back in time. Moreover, what sort of feminism is it which portrays as a tender lover a man who in reality was a brutal rapist? 6/10

Artemisia (1997)

What works: great sets and scenes, very convincing recreation of the times, from the domestic to the holy, from the artist's studio to a bordello. The leading actress, Valentine Cervi, is strong and resourceful and pulls of an excellent Artemisia Gentileschi, the woman artist active in the early 1600s. Her teacher and rapist is Agostino Tassi, played with zest in a way that sparks the movie to life. The rest of the cast is good, even excellent, but they are in supporting roles or remain a bit functional (as with Artemisia's father).

What fails: two things. One is the famous problem that the rape of the main character is turned into something of a feisty love affair, changing a key part of the abusive history the artist lived and fought through. It wasn't necessary. This isn't a love story. The other drawback is we never quite see her art--one painting, a famous one (Judith Slaying Holofernes), isn't enough to show she had exceptional talent both technically and imaginatively. It's true, she was a Caravaggio or a Rembrandt (her contemporaries) but her work continues to rise in the view of art historians. It would give some foundation to the movie, better foundation than some oversimplified and even inaccurate statements tacked on the end in plain text.

What is curious: this is a highly sexualized account, to the point of being bizarre. There's no sense this defines Artemesia historically, and though sex probably existed back then, it is pushed to the foreground here as a preoccupation of the filmmakers more than the subject. I didn't mind, but I find it a bit of a bore. There are lovers on the beach quite explicitly seen, the famous rape scene a little less graphic, some peering into a whorehouse with lots of details, and so on. Nudity, too, is part of the reality, and is brought up front here. That might be a plus or minus for many of you, but it didn't contribute to the movie, as a film, for me.

What the movie does best is establish the world of 1610 Rome and environs, and to lay out the basics of Artemisia's situation before her famous move to Florence and her rise into contemporary appreciation (the movie ends with her leaving her family in Rome). It's all guesswork as to the artist's temperament, and Cervi is creditable. The idea of a headstrong young woman willing to take chances, curious about everything, is almost necessary to be able to buck the system. And that male dominated system is evident in the workings of the studios, the home, and eventually the torturous trial.

I'm an art historian of sorts (my specialty is photography), and I watch all biographies of artists on film with skepticism. And so it's no surprise this left me slightly flat--I expected more. In a way, if a film is only about the aura of the artist and her or his world, it might be better to just create a fantasia about it. This gives the appearance of being historical, and as such it is a bit disappointing. Oddly, it's a French movie about an Italian artist, and I saw it with English subtitles.

Artimisia was on late last night. At first I didn't think I would like it, but seeing I didn't feel like sleeping yet and nothing else being on, I continued watching and felt myself intrigued by the young Artimisia, a virgin, pure and passionate. Her romance with the older Tassi envoked recognisable feelings. Even though the film is based on a very romantisised level and not reality, I loved it a lot more than the usual biographys or costume drama's. Great play, great camerashots, great music and texts. I loved it and I want more of it! :-)

I'm normally a sucker for romantic films which are well-filmed and well-acted out. This is a romantic (period) film set in 17th-century Italy, but filmed in French with English subtitles. The fact that it is a period film means it will inevitably be slower-paced than films set in the modern day era, so it Will bore some. If you can overlook that fact, it is actually a really good film. The scenery, the costumes, and the cinematography are beautiful, and the main actors and actress are very compelling in their portrayals, projecting the intensity of the emotions that are running through the plot. The story is like a sad love story with an unhappy ending. Its easy to believe that this is an accurate portrayal of the real-life characters. In spite of the fact that I was really moved by the main characters and the storyline, I decided to check out the validity of the story and found out that the main theme of the movie's story - that of an sad unfinished love story - was completely fabricated.

In real life, Artemisia was raped by Tassi initially, rather than submitting to his advances willingly and passionately as the movie had portrayed. She continued to have sexual relations with him only because he had repeatedly promised to marry her. When they were in court, he had *not* admitted guilt of rape out of pity for Artemisia's torture (unlike what the movie portrays). In reality, he had tried to portray Artemisia as a loose, promiscuous woman with insatiable sexual urges. In the movie, his sister testified in court that Tassi had a wife and had sexual relations with his sister-in-law, and Tassi's character was all the while made to appear as if his sister had been slandering him regarding his alleged affair with his sister-in-law (although he admits to having had a wife back in Florence). Needless to say, in reality it wasn't really like that at all. In fact, far from it. Tassi was really responsible in the planned murder of his wife, whom he had begotten from rape. And to add to that, Tassi really had sexual relations with his sister-in-law, impregnating her in the process, but all this wasn't really mutual as well - again, he had raped his sister-in-law before.

So now we have a clear picture of the real Tassi as a multiple sex offender, what do we make of the film Artemisia's portrayal of him as a lover? We take it as an attempt to make this movie into a romantic film... that this film was never made to be historically accurate... Apart from these points just mentioned, there were other historical inaccuracies like in its interpretation of Artemisia's art (in real-life, she was never really influenced by Tassi's painting style, and she was actually considered a much better painter than Tassi ever was.) One thing remains true and its the fact that Artemisia Gentileschi has been credited as the first woman painter in history, and although her mastery of the art rivalled many of her male peers, she had always experienced difficulty in getting enough credit for her work because of her gender as a woman, in 17th century Italy.

Enjoy this film for its own sake, for it is a pretty good romantic drama, but take its historical references with a grain of salt.