Review: ARTEMISIA
[Miramax-ZOE]
A film by Agnes Merlet
Rated R [French, with subtitles]
Review by: Joy Wyse
In these days of sexual harassment cases, I suggest that people go to see ARTEMISIA to see what sexual harassment really is.
The true story opens in Rome in 1610 where 15 year old Artemisia is living in a convent. She takes a candle from the chapel to enable her to have light in the late hours in her room to draw. Her ability to sketch the human body comes from her use of this candle and a mirror to examine and recreate her own naked body. When her artist father, Messier Gentileschi, is shown her drawings he takes her from the convent to become his assistant. She does much of the painting that is passed off as his work.
She wants to learn as much as possible but is not allowed to attend the academy, simply because she is a female. Her desire to learn about the male body is fulfilled when she convinces a young worker to take off his clothes for her, in exchange for a kiss. She sketches what she has seen.
In the art world of that era females are only used as nude models and participants in after hour orgies. When her father is hired to work with Agostino Tassi in painting the frescoes for a new church, Artemisia learns even more when she peeks through the window at one of the orgies. She prevails upon Tassi to become her art teacher and shows him her sketches. When he sees the male nudes that she has done, he surmises that she is much more experienced than she is, and he is very surprised when she loses her virginity to him.
When her father learns of their indiscretions, he has Tassi arrested, for rape. Artemisia insists that he did not rape her, but her father is trying to save her reputation, even at the cost of Tassi's career and freedom. Some of the scenes that follow had the audience gasping at what happens next.
The epilogue gives a condensed version of what became of them. Artemisia did, in fact, become a recognized artist, with works on exhibition at the Louvre, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This is an excellent movie, although it will not appeal to everyone. I'm very glad that I saw it. I learned from it and I wouldn't mind seeing it again.
I give it a solid B.
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