You can tell that Girl with a Pearl Earring is a serious picture: It's about the economics of living in the more or less bourgeois family of a great painter. Johannes Vermeer is a brooding and moody perfectionist who takes months to finish his work while his baby-factory wife broods in emotional abandonment and his flinty mother-in-law tries to figure out how to keep his commissions coming in. Obviously no businessman, Johannes agonizes over every detail of light and tone on his canvasses while trying to ignore the foolish soap opera around him.

Into this tinderbox comes the quiet and intense Griet, to be abused by three generations of ladies in the house. All maids are considered thievesand husband-stealers, and function as all-purpose scapegoats. The insecure wife grows angrier at Griet's poise under fire and assumes that there's something going on up in her husband's studio. The mother-in-law eventually realizes that Griet is not the problem, but the servant-employer relationship is like a stone wall of inequity.

Griet ends up having an "affair of art" with Vermeer, starting with her curiosity and growing as the painter realizes she's sensitive to the finer points of composition and can discern the play of colors in clouds. She mixes his paints and provides a second set of eyes that allow the painter to step back from his work ever so slightly.

Girl with a Pearl Earring doesn't inject a love affair - exactly - but instead a tentative series of scenes of muted emotion that suggest that Johannes and Griet are kindred spirits. Griet contends with the wife's growing rage (somewhat understandable) and the maliciousness of a Vermeer daughter. The tough cook grows to love Griet and the old lady in the house also finds she can trust her. She does three jobs while serving as the painter's aide, and also has a growing relationship with the local butcher apprentice (Cillian Murphy). But the toughest problem emerges when Griet catches the wandering eye of Vermeer's patron Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), a nasty and vain troublemaker who covets every young female in his sight. He insists that Vermeer paint a portrait of Griet, which has to be done in secret from the jealous wife. The mother-in-law finds herself on Griet's side of the problem, while Griet and Vermeer's attraction is played out in a painter's canvas instead of a bed.

By the time Griet sits for the title portrait we're prepared; we understand that we've been watching an imaginary backstory to explain the special intensity of the famous painting. Scarlett Johansson resembles the girl with the single pierced ear closely enough and the creation of the work of art becomes an aesthetic substitute for passion. The ear-piercing is suggestive of initiation and the longing on the face of the girl in the painting expresses all the invisible waves between painter and subject. No wonder the wife tries to destroy the painting - the intimacy is all there for anyone to see.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a delicate mix of quiet moments and thoughful observances. Johannsen strikes the right chord throughout, Colin Firth (Bridget Jones' Diary, Shakespeare in Love) is brooding as the painter and Judy Parfitt and Essie Davis excellent as threatened females. Tom Wilkinson is completely under control as the heel of a "gentleman," providing an impressive contrast with his role in the excellent In the Bedroom.

Music can ruin a picture like this one but Alexandre Desplat's melodies lift the film without forcing artificial moods onto the rich and attractive images. I've never even contemplated a movie about the daily life of a great painter, which just goes to prove that there are still original story ideas waiting to be found.

Lion's Gate's DVD of Girl with a Pearl Earring does the movie justice with this clear and colorful presentation. The enhanced picture keeps the colors and tones dark and rich. When Griet worries about the studio light changing if she cleans the windows, we can understand her concern.

The main extra is a cable channel "making of a scene" behind-the-scenes docu that introduces the creatives well, but then proceeds with a primer in filmmaking that wants to be illuminating but communicates little but an "independent spirit" hip-ness. The methods by which the banquet scene was shot are divulged as if they were secrets or revelations, when in reality the cameraman's taste and the director's decisions are largely intuitive and self-evident in the finished film. The real benefit is seeing the accomplished actors preparing and in stage waits.

Savant's screener came without a case or packaging, leaving me to comment only that the cover illustration hints at an affair between artist and model which doesn't really take place. The cast run lists a "Van Leeuwenhoek" near the bottom, which makes me wonder if a scene wasn't deleted.

A music video using Johannsson and the artist's studio set is an amusing if irrelevant addition. We do get to see the actress in a modern context and with an entirely different look.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Girl with a Pearl Earring rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: tv BTS promo, deleted scene
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: May 20, 2004