Scarlett Johansson is featured in a recent issue of Vanity Fair magazine (December 2011), wearing haute couture clothes—Givenchy, Armani Prive, Alexander McQueen, Giambattista Valli—and talking about her work in film and theater. I had forgotten how young she is (26 years old), as it seems as if I have been watching her for years—it says something about the impression she makes, about the solidity and sensual awareness that make her seem mature. Her performances in Girl with a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber, 2003) and Match Point (Woody Allen, 2004) are strong—and Girl is a favorite of mine: it is about the painter Johannes Vermeer, his work and attempt to get another commission from a calculating patron, and how the painter includes a young housemaid in his work as studio caretaker and subject, to his wife’s intensifying discomfort. The wife does not understand how an illiterate girl can be so entrancing, but the girl has an instinct for art, for the importance of light and scene-setting, and she helps with making the paint, before becoming a figure in a portrait that would become famous. Johansson is the young woman and Colin Firth is the painter in a film with well-composed and informative images, a film that is pleasing in its exploration and fulfillment of its theme.
Peter Webber's Girl with a Pearl Earing presents a certain time in the painter's life, rather than a complete biography. Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) lived in the Netherlands, a Protestant married to a Catholic who gave him eleven children. Vermeer painted historical and domestic scenes and was a respected painter, known for color, detail, and texture, for the quality of his work, but he was not very productive in terms of quantity of paintings, and faced financial difficulties.
Scarlett Johansson’s work in Girl with a Pearl Earring is very attentive and full of subtle responses—and it’s great to observe her character’s humility and self-respect, her practicality and idealism; how she responds instinctively to the rudeness and cruelty of children (with outrage, with hurt), and to the genius and manipulation of a man she respects (with admiration, with a distancing gesture). Scarlett Johansson is a beautiful woman, a unique film object; and someone I have looked forward to seeing, although I do not see all of her work. I like as well, in different ways and to different extents, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Diahann Carroll, Viola Davis, Kimberly Elise, Jane Fonda, Naomie Harris, Anne Hathaway, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Regina King, Jessica Lange, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Thandie Newton, Natalie Portman, Zoe Saldana, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman, Kate Winslet, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. There are others. It is sad to think that I do not see most of them frequently enough.
