nationality: French
wri./dir.Agnes Merlet
st. Valentina Cervi, Michel Serrault, Miki Manojlovic, Luca Zingaretti, Emmanuelle Devos
screening at: the Verona, Hoyts Broadway

A masterly rendition of Italy, 1610, depicting the religious and artistic passions which rule the lives and loves of several painters. As a female artist, Artemisia Gentileschi is not allowed to view the naked male body, nor enter the vaunted painters Academy. Talented and persistant, she finds a mentor in the notorious, but favoured painter, Agostino Tassi. Artemisia's strict father feel threatened by the younger and more skilled Tassi, and when Artemisia's landscape and perspective lessons end with her seduction and deflowering, spiteful lawsuits and forced separation are the result. The subject of painting allows the director Merlet to employ frames within frames, layered windows, canvases and grid-lines on which to chart the containment and repression of passions, body and landscape. The film is set in a time when painters like Tassi were just beginning to move beyond the studio to paint landscapes, with accurate perspective and natural lighting. Identification and sympathy are encouraged through the strong contrast between Tassi's bungalow atop the grassy clifftops, and the grim stonework and candlelit interiors of the Gentileschi workshops.

Merlet makes Artemisia a strong, sensuous woman who lies in court in order to protect her lover Tassi, from death. This is a markedly different account from that of the history books, in which Tassi appears a far more sinister character, convicted of incest, rape, and conspiracy to murder his wife. In 1612, Tassi was trialed for raping Artemisia, claiming as his defence that it was she who had seduced him, whilst Artemisia testified under torture that she had been raped despite wounding him with a knife. History hints that her lawyer was Tassi's lover, and Artemisia's chaperone, Tassi's accomplice. Tassi was sentenced to just eight months imprisonment, and the charges later dropped. Artemisia went on to become the first female to be recognised as a great artist in the history books, which perhaps says more about history and society than female artists. Her most famous work, Judith Slaying Holofernes, dates from the rape trial, and depicts two women decapitating the conquering Assyrian general.

In offering a tragic-romantic reinterpretation of history, the director has created a boldly beautiful work, rubbed raw in places, brashly polished in others, as the stills (above and right) attest. From the frescos to the fields, the screen is draped with the vibrant colour of rich fabrics and natural textures. Sand on brushed woollen cloaks, rough wooden frames, coarse flax, slick oil paints and stained glasses infuse the film with the intense tactility of honeycomb, fresh bread, red wine. My memories of the film form a rich membrane of things sensed, rather than viewed - of cherished touch, scent, music and space, rather than movement, pace or performance. Perhaps this is why the film attains a fullness beyond its historical references, characters or subject.

eugs
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