Web posted on: Friday, June 05, 1998 4:17:40 PM

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- Agnès Merlet's "Artemisia" is one of those movies that's so exquisitely photographed, you almost feel personally responsible for it not being very interesting. Although the movie is a biography of a scandalously female Italian Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, most of what goes on here has to do with color, texture, lighting, and, more often than not, brashly exposing the human anatomy.

Those anatomies are also quite exquisite, but I finally had to ask myself why everybody went to so much trouble to put them on display. This is a movie that wants to be framed and hung up in a museum, never mind such cumbersome aspects of the filmic art form as plot momentum and thematic depth.

I kept being reminded of Peter Greenaway's films, which are usually so obsessed with visual voluptuousness and sensuality, they eventually forget to be about much of anything at all. Greenaway's most recent display case, "The Pillow Book," certainly takes it a few steps further than "Artemisia" does, but, after about an hour, both movies give you the strange feeling that you've gorged yourself on a bushel basketful of overripe peaches. And every 10 minutes there's a couple more naked people bouncing up and down in the corner. "Artemisia" very nearly got slapped with an NC-17 rating, and with good reason; it's like an extended orgy at a vineyard.

World-class, busty Italian actress Valentina Cervi stars as Artemisia, who, as the story opens, is kicked out of a convent for drawing nude pictures of herself when the nuns aren't looking. This secrecy is one of the few moments of discretion that she displays in the entire movie, although we, of course, get to watch her strip before she starts drawing -- you know, for the sake of art. The head priest of the convent, however, detects that Artemisia, whose father is a fine painter, has a talent that should be nurtured.

She receives as much encouragement to pursue that talent as the society she's living in will allow, but, unfortunately, the Pope has decreed that women aren't allowed to paint nudes. Those of you with coffee table books that feature paintings from the 1600s will notice that pants are not a major part of the composition in most of those works, so this causes a big problem for Artemisia. It's not much of a problem for the filmmakers, however, who can now spend as much time as possible having her devise various ways to make people take their clothes off in front of her. Hey, hey, dontcha know.

Artemisia's father eventually hooks her up with a painter named Agostino Tassi (Miki Manojlovic), who agrees to quietly school her in the finer points of art that are verboten to women, regardless of how talented they are. Cervi invests Artemisia with a very believable, dark-eyed passion for the form; she wants to paint and will do so, societal norms be damned. (This emotional approach to life is telegraphed a little too often, as in Artemisia's insistence on running everywhere, in flowing, white dresses, through lush fields against a stone-gray sky. She must've had a hell of a cardiovascular system.)

She doesn't, however, count on her amorous teacher falling in love with her, or semi-raping her, for that matter ... if, of course, such a thing is possible.

Frankly, I think it isn't, but the movie goes to great lengths to make Artemisia's initial session of lovemaking with Tassi into a little bit of both -- she's willing, but not really. It's not like he doesn't get his comeuppance, though. A great deal of the story focuses on the trial that arises from their coupling, with more than enough teeth gnashing to go around.

This part also features a none-too-subtle examination of Artemisia to determine if she's lying when she claims that nothing has happened and she's still a virgin. I'm telling you, medical training films aren't this body-obsessive.

I don't want to imply that this is something like "The Red Shoe Diaries," however. As I've already said, the production is staggeringly beautiful. Director of photography Benoit Delhomme and production designer Antonello Geleng are the front-runners for next year's Oscars in those categories, if voters haven't forgotten about the movie's existence by then.

Cervi's strong-willed performance is also quite affecting, but the whole thing seems a little too voyeuristic to me. In the 1950s, the term "art film" mostly meant that people were allowed to strip down during the story. For all the reasoning behind a lot of the butt-bearing in this one, I still felt like there was half an eye aimed at the lechers in the audience. After all, they have to be entertained, too.

"Artemisia" is great to look at, in more ways than one, but kids should be kept out of the theater. It would probably play well to art history classes, and I'm not saying that sarcastically. Most of the interest lies in seeing how painters practiced their craft nearly 400 years ago. Rated R. 96 minutes. In French, with English subtitles.

Related site:

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• Internet Movie Database -- "Artemisia"

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