Girl with a Pearl Earring

Colour, 35 mm
United Kingdom, Luxembourg, 2003, 95 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Delft, Holland, 1665. After her father loses his sight, 17-year-old Griet must go to work to support the family. Once in the city, she seeks a job as a maid in the home of painter Johannes Vermeer. The lonely artist soon discovers that the shy servant girl not only has an eye for colour and composition but is able to understand his complex interior world as well. Hours spent together in the painter´s studio transform into precious moments filled with quiet harmony. The artist becomes ever more fascinated by the girl´s beauty, and a delicate relationship grows between them which the painter´s family - and particularly his jealous, possessive and ever-pregnant wife, Catharina - cannot help but notice. Griet captivates as well Vermeer´s rich, scheming patron, Van Ruijven, who presses the artist to paint her. Thus was conceived one of the most admired and mysterious paintings in the world...

About the director

Peter Webber is a self-taught filmmaker who gained a name in movies with the short The Zebra Man. He first found work as an editor on Anand Tucker´s feature debut, a bio of Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupery entitled Saint-Ex (1996). Then followed a number of noteworthy made-for-TV movies: The Temptation of Franz Schubert (1997), Underground (1999), Men Only (2001) and The Stretford Wives (2002). His adaptation of Tracy Chevalier´s popular novel Girl with a Pearl Earring is the director´s feature debut. For this film cameraman Eduardo Serra won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography and the same honour at San Sebastian; Peter Webber took the C.I.C.A.E. Award at San Sebastian.