Artemisia
France/Germany/Italy 1997
Reviewed by Adrian Searle
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Rome, 1610. Artemisia, the precocious teenage daughter of successful painter Orazio Gentileschi, is forbidden by the strictures of the church from becoming a painter. But her father recognises her talent and sets her to work in his studio. Unable to study anatomy, Artemisia uses her own body as a model and spies on a couple having sex on the beach. She flirts with a young fisherman, and draws his naked body in exchange for a kiss.
Agostino Tassi, a Florentine painter and master of new perspective techniques, arrives in Rome. Artemisia is fascinated by the newcomer. Tassi, who has a reputation for debauchery, moves nearby and begins to work with Orazio on a church-fresco commission. Artemisia, watching through a window, witnesses an orgy in Tassi's house. Artemisia becomes Tassi's pupil. Between lessons she has Tassi model for her. He seduces her, confessing his love.
They continue to meet as lovers, under the guise of his tutelage. Orazio discovers the truth and has Tassi arrested for rape in order to force a marriage, while Tassi's friends try to blacken Artemisia's name, using her life-drawings of men as evidence. At the trial Artemisia insists she is still a virgin but the truth is found out. It is revealed that Tassi has an estranged wife and son in Florence. Artemisia visits Tassi in prison and works furiously in her studio. The judge orders her torture and Tassi confesses to rape to save her suffering. Tassi goes to jail for two years. Artemisia never sees him again, but her reputation is established as the first great female painter.
Review
Agnès Merlet's film is no exception to the rule that bio-pics and fictionalisations invariably get art and artists wrong. This film has already attracted the wrath of art historians, especially in the US, for its distortion of the life of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652). The film has the headstrong Artemisia as a willing lover to Agostino Tassi and ignores evidence that, as well as raping his 17-year-old pupil, Tassi also murdered his wife and child and committed incest with his sister.
Gentileschi's artistic career is also foreshortened, having her completing in her teens a self-portrait she wasn't to paint for another 20 years. But what the hell - this is a movie, and the fact that Artemisia has been the subject of intense study by feminist art historians for the past 20 years or so (see art-historian Griselda Pollock's article in S&S November 1998) hasn't put Merlet off. Instead, she wants us to see Artemisia and Tassi as Cathy and Heathcliff.
It is surprising that Merlet has made a movie about awakening sexuality and forbidden knowledge, rather than a post-feminist Jacobean tragedy. And while she may not care for art history, she is fascinated by all those art-theoretical discourses about creativity, desire and the gaze. Artemisia spies on a couple having sex on the beach and others through a window. She bribes a boy with a kiss for a look at his cock, and is in turn spied on by her father. The prison bars are equated with the grid frame used for perspective drawing, and Artemisia's erstwhile lover talks meaningfully about "a spurt of white" on a canvas. When alone, Artemisia spouts the kind of stuff usually found in the writings of theorist Julia Kristeva, as she acts out an artistic-Oedipal conflict with her dad and contemplates the sun.
Valentina Cervi holds our attention as a believably ambitious and sexually curious late-adolescent, but she's hardly credible as the girl-genius artist, painting the suicidal Lucretia and Holofernes-slaying Judith by candlelight in her Wendy House studio in dad's back garden. The way Merlet has it, the theoretical crisis in representation was alive and well 400 years ago.
The movie is grounded by a fascination with the paraphernalia of the baroque painter: winged Caravaggiste cherub-boys suspended from wires in the father's studio; the camera obscura, perspective frames and lenses - the high-tech stock-in-trade of seventeenth-century painting. We meet a gossipy old pigment-grinder, vain patrons, and an assistant with a nice line in illicit porno-drawings. There's even a wicked stepmother. With camerawork and lighting out of Caravaggio, Le Nain and the Pre-Raphaelites, and Don't Look Now-style flashes of blood and paint, the film is sophisticated to look at. This is a genre film, in just the same way that Gentileschi's paintings are largely genre, mythological or religious subjects. Art history has created a modern myth out Artemisia too, and the film is no more or less than a variation on the theme of the suffering female artist. If it wasn't supposedly based on such an iconic figure as Artemisia Gentileschi, it would make for a decent enough post-watershed costume drama on television, which is where Artemisia will probably end up.
Credits
- Producer
- Patrice Haddad
- Screenplay
- Agnès Merlet
- Director of Photography
- Benoît Delhomme
- Editor
- Guy Lecorne
- Production Designer
- Antonello Geleng
- Music
- Krishna Lévy
- ©Première Heure/France 3 Cinéma/Schlemmer Film/3 Emme Cinematografica
- Production Companies
- Première Heure Long Métrage presents a co-production of Première Heure/Schlemmer Film/France 3 Cinéma/3 Emme Cinematografica with the support of Fonds Eurimages and with participation of Canal+/Centre National de la Cinématographie in association with Sofygram/Sofinergie 4/Cofimage 8 and the support of La Procirep
- Screenplay developed in collaboration with Equinoxe
- Co-producers
- Christoph Meyer-Wiel
- Leo Pescarolo
- Production Executives
- Lilian Saly
- Patricia Allard
- Daniel Wuhrmann
- Italy:
- Conchita Airoldi
- Dino Di Dionisio
- Production Co-ordinator
- Françoise Douarinou
- Production Managers
- Patrick Lancelot
- Samanta Antonnicola
- Unit Production Managers
- Carla Bernardin
- Barbara Petrelli
- Unit Managers
- Vanessa Banes
- Quentin de Fouchecoeur
- Emilio Zaccaria
- Assistant Directors
- Alfred Lot
- Enrico Marrari
- Script Supervisors
- Marie Vermillard
- Estelle Bault
- Casting
- Bruno Levy
- Screenplay Collaboration
- Christine Miller
- Screenplay Supervisor
- Pascal Arnold Ascandes
- Adaptation/Dialogue
- Agnès Merlet
- Patrick Amos
- Special Effects
- Zed
- Associate Editor
- Anja Lüdcke
- Art Director
- Emita Frigato
- Frescoes
- Manuel Sierra Vasquez
- Paintings
- Arnaud Troubetzkoy
- Drawings
- Denise Lupi
- Costume Designer
- Dominique Borg
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Pierre Bechir
- Key Make-up
- Maurizio Silvi
- Make-up Artist
- Maurizio Nardi
- Key Hairstylist
- Ferdinando Merolla
- Title Opticals
- T.E.V.A.
- Title Design
- Joe Baar
- François Roland
- Titles
- Télécreatures
- End Titles
- Arane
- Jean Lecoeur
- Arthur Lecoeur
- Music Performed by
- Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra
- Orchestra Director
- Deian Pavlov
- Orchestra Managers
- Elena Tchoutchkova
- Victor Tchoutchkov
- Music Engineer
- Didier Lizé
- Sound
- François Waledisch
- Mixer
- Jean-Pierre Laforce
- Post-synchronization
- Jacques Lévy
- Associate Mixer
- Olivier Do Huu
- Sound Editor
- Pierre Choukroun
- Sound Effects
- Laurent Lévy
- Paintings Consultant
- Olivier Gillon
- Cast
- Michel Serrault
- Orazio Gentileschi
- Valentina Cervi
- Artemisia Gentileschi
- Miki Manojlovic
- Agostino Tassi
- Luca Zingaretti
- Cosimo
- Brigitte Catillon
- Tuzia
- Frédéric Pierrot
- Roberto
- Maurice Garrel
- The Judge
- Emmanuelle Devos
- Costanza
- Yann Trégouet
- Fulvio
- Jacques Nolot
- the lawyer
- Silvia De Santis
- Marisa
- Renato Carpentieri
- Nicolo
- Sami Bouajila
- Tassi's assistant
- Dominique Reymond
- Tassi's sister
- Alain Ollivier
- the duke
- Liliane Rovère
- rich merchant's wife
- Patrick Lancelot
- Academy director
- Rinaldo Rocco
- Enrico Salimbeni
- students at the Academy
- Catherine Zago
- mother superior
- Anna Lelio
- Claudia Giannotti
- wise women
- Lorenzo Lavia
- Orazio's assistant
- Edoardo Ruiz
- Aaron De luca
- Tassi's assistants
- Guido Roncalli
- Duke's servant
- Pierre Bechir
- rich merchant's son
- Massimo Pittarello
- the executioner
- Paolo De Vita
- Duilio Raggetti
- Gianmaria Donadio
- Veronica Barelli
- Lucia Prato
- Sebastian Negrin
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Gala Film Distributors
- 8,627 feet
- 95 minutes 52 seconds
- Dolby digital
- In Colour
- Anamorphic [Panavision]
- Subtitles