Last night I was feeling edgy. That fidgeting edginess that seems to arrive and then settle in for the evening. Then I pressed play on my video and half an hour later I was, according to my girlfriend, sleeping like a baby. Cue the jabs in the ribs that forced me to endure the remainder of this anaemic folly. I must say that I am often a fan of films in which very little of any consequence occurs. The previous night, for instance, I had loved every minute of The station Agent. This sort of film however can only work if it manages to engage. And in this The Girl with a Pearl Earring, for all its beautiful costumes and scenery, spectacularly fails. Colin Firth plays the same role we all know by heart, and Scarlet Johansson simply fails to bring any sympathy or life to her character. Tom Wilkinson is as good as ever, but his character is so one dimensional you wonder whether he has simply been copied and pasted from a comic book of villains. I was left rather annoyed by this pointless work. Firstly because I had been woken up to suffer it, and secondly because every time I see the beautiful painting that inspired it, I will be left with the painful image of a mute Scarlet Johansson and a mute Colin Firth in a room together, with not an ounce of tension between them.
Review of Girl with a Pearl Earring
