
Dir: Agnès Merlet, 1997, France/Italy, 98 mins, French with subtitles
Cast: Valentina Cervi, Michel Serrault, Miki Manojlovic
Italy, 1610: aspiring, young artist Artemisia (Cervi) has a professional curiosity about male anatomy, forbidden to her eyes. Despite Artemisias prodigious talent, her gender prevents her being accepted as an art student. Her father, established artist Orazio Gentileschi (Serrault), persuades dynamic, Florentine painter Augustino Tassi (Manojlovic), to take Artemisia as his student. Tassi opens Artemisias eyes to new methods of composition, but his infatuation leads to her rape. Regretting his actions, Tassi professes love, but Orazio discovers their relationship and takes the matter to court. The result is poor Artemisia is interrogated and tortured, an event that will have a lasting influence upon her lifes art.
Artemisia Gentileschi is considered the first, significant female painter in western art. An early baroque artist, influenced by Caravaggio, her startling depictions of violence won great acclaim and led her to become the first woman ever admitted into the Accademie di Arte del Disegno, in Florence. Many scholars have interpreted her painting, Judith Beheading Holofernes as a revenge fantasy against the violence Artemisia suffered. Upon release, Merlets film faced criticism from the art world for portraying Artemisias involvement with Tassi as a tragic love affair. Meanwhile, film critics disliked the ambiguous depiction of their relationship; neither naïve, girlish fancy betrayed by rape, nor full blown love.
One could accuse Merlet of trying to have her cake and eat it, yet in truth such ambiguity staves off snap judgements and serves the story well. Manojlovic renders Tassi vacant and self-serving, his eleventh hour declaration of love doesnt convince. However, this inconsistent characterization doesnt harm his climactic self-sacrifice, since Merlet appears to interpret it as the act of a wayward man, trying to do the right thing. By contrast, Cervis fiery, multi-layered portrayal befits what more recent writers have striven for: a less reductive reading of Artemisias life and work, presenting a dynamic, young artist who used her past and personality as weapons to fight against prejudice in the art world.
It brings to mind Germaine Greers controversial declaration that rape isnt the worse thing that could happen to a woman. Perhaps if isnt had been substituted with the words: shouldnt be, people would have a clearer idea of what Greer was suggesting. Though Tassi tries to convince her the rape was an act of love, Artemisia is able to reinterpret the trauma via her developing artistic awareness and see it for what it was. Cervi develops Artemisia from a wide-eyed ingénue into a passionate, young heroine adept at sorting lies from the truth. Merlets roving camera explores undraped bodies with a painters eye, while the beautiful cinematography of Benoit Delhomme evokes the range of Artemisias palette with chiaroscuro interiors and idyllic landscapes saturated in gold. For all its faults, the film remains an entrancing journey into the mind of a truly significant artist.
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