Instead of developing the crucial narrative thread involving the daughter of a Nazi who stole a Vermeer during WWII, director Brent Shields' adaptation of Susan Vreeland's novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, slogs through anecdotal dramas about the painting's previous owners. European History teacher Cornelia Englebrecht (Glenn Close) welcomes new art instructor Richard (Thomas Gibson) to the tony high-school where she's employed. After sizing up his integrity, she shares a secret: Her father owns a Vermeer that Cornelia keeps hidden in a museum-type space at her home. Cornelia regales Richard with the provenance of the unknown masterpiece, while remaining strangely tight-lipped about how it came into her father's possession. In 1670, Vermeer created this portrait of his daughter, Magdalena (Laurien Van Den Broeck), who harbored artistic aspirations of her own. Tragedy touches Vermeer household when, worried that his sister's additional heirs will lessen his maternal inheritance, Magdalena's deranged Uncle beats her pregnant mother. At a Delft auction in 1712, the portrait becomes the property of the wealthy Rika (Ellen Burstyn). Rika's undisciplined nephew, Adrian (Kieran Bew), impregnates Rika’s servant, Aletta (Kelly McDonald), who steals the painting. After the superstitious Aletta smothers one of her twins babies, Adrian can no longer bear to look at the portrait. He abandons it and his surviving infant at the flooded farm of
Stijn (Roef Ragas) and Saskia (Thekla Reuten). Saskia loves the Vermeer so much she would rather see her family starve than part with it. Later, in the eighteenth century, the portrait becomes a gift that a suitor intends for his beloved, but his betrothed subsequently dies. Eventually, the painting falls into the hands of a German-Jewish family, and during WWII Officer Karl Englebrecht (Hermann Weiskopf) seizes it and shunts the owners off to a concentration camp. Will Richard go public with Cornelia's astonishing story, which culminates in the admission that her father was a both a Nazi and an art thief? This highbrow project dabbles in what-if art history and Vermeer trivia (the fact that he never painted members of his own family falls into both categories), its mini-dramas never amount to anything especially powerful. Most of the international cast of actors behave as though they were appearing in a series tableaux vivants, but Close is creepily brilliant as the Vermeer's guilt-stricken caretaker. --Robert Pardi
