Dressed in a turquoise corduroy suit & sporting a shoulder-length mop of hair, the great Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (Firth) is in the midst of a turbulent domestic scene with his wife (Davis), who has discovered that the servant girl, Griet (Johansson), has modeled for him - wearing her earrings.  Quite a scandal, if you live in 17th-century Delft.

"It's a film about painting," first-time director Webber says on the Luxembourg set of GWAPE, an adaption of Tracy Chevalier's 1999 best-selling historical novel that imagines a liaison between the artist & the subject of the eponymous painting.  (Kate Hudson & Ralph Fiennes were originally set to star until early financing fell through.)  "But it's also about money and sex and obsession and power and repression - watching people who want to shag each other's brains out and not being able to.  That's much more interesting than seeing people do it."

Little is known about the Dutch master, who when he died at 43 left behind a wife, 11 children, and 35 paintings, but virtually no record of himself.  Firth's suit & coiffure are the filmmaker's improvisations.  Is the hair real?

"No," says the self-deprecating Firth (Bridget Jones's Diary), fondly twisting a strand.  "I think this is probably no longer possible."  The actor, who says he fell in love with the painter's work when he saw Young Woman With a Water Jug at the Met several years ago, admits that he has become a bit of a Vermeer nerd.  But gathering trivia hasn't helped him to demystify the artist.  "I would love to know what Vermeer looked like, and what he had for breakfast, and what he sounded like when he spoke," says Firth.  "I'm dying of curiosity. But it wouldn't help me get any closer to his pictures."

Johansson (Ghost World), on the other hand, in dyed-blond eyebrows & period clothes looks uncannily like the subject of the famous painting.  She also adpoted a British accent.  "I'm just trying to avoid sounding like a complete asshole," she says.  The young actress is relieved to be shooting this understated love story in Europe, and that it's not a typical American production.  "It would be completely hellish to have the pressure of putting on a Hollywood ending, or putting a scene where Vermeer sees Griest washing her breasts." 
- Kristen Hohenadel

The photo caption reads:  PARTY AT VERMEER'S: Colin Firth, seated at far right, stars as the realist painter, and Scarlet Johansson, standing at far left with director Peter Webber, plays his famous subject.

SET FACT:  "I have a mullet," Scarlett Johansson says of her new hairstyle, which works well under the headscarf that her character Griet wears throughout the film. "So, it's not exactly a period cut." 

Copyright © Premiere 2003
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

@ Premiere 2003
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.