While
it is interesting to take a look at the patriarchal mentality of the early
17th century, which makes today's patriarchal society look like a weekend
seminar on feminism, Artemisia unfortunately fails to build
up even moderate suspense, or to provide the audience with convincing characters.
The rest of the story concentrates on the by no means complete voyage of
discovery of painting; the "revolutionary" techniques do raise a smile
or two, but, after a time, get tedious. Just because this is about the
struggles of the first historically attested female painter does not mean
that Agnès Merlet has delivered a feminist film. The mere
fact that we get to see women falling over as they walk and keep dropping
painting implements - can you imagine a man doing that? - conjours up a
certain amount of involuntary pleasure in the audience, as long as they
retain some sense of humour.But what speaks volumes is the way the focus on the court case moves away from the alledged rape of the woman to the suffering of the men. The artistic career of the harrassed woman seems to be sealed, you might think. On the contrary, the film, with a woman's name as its title, deems it more important to bring out the suffering of the father under the yoke of moralistic despair. After all, he is played by a French film star, Michel Serrault, who needs to have more to do than just feeding lines to the newcomer. But Artemisia is not even second on the list of important characters. Before her comes another man, the unfairly charged lover of the young artist. His career is now in ruins, and two years in jail are hanging over him.
Let's just go back a bit: unfairly charged? It may be that the historical characters lived in a hypocritical age, when lust was both condemned and widespread, which is rightly attacked here. But a critical look at the deeds of an elderly man, who uses his position of power to seduce a 15-year-old girl (according to our information, she was in fact 13) would not have been inappropriate - even if this girl is played by an actress, Valentina Cervi, who was, in fact, 23 at the time of filming and doesn't look a day younger. As in the two other chauvinistic pieces to come out this year, Lolita and Campus, the real crime is negated by the excessive treatment of a false charge. But this film does not originally shy away from openly admitting the true motives behind Tassi accepting Artemisia as his pupil. Tassi begins sexually harrassing her the minute they come into contact, long before Artemisia even dreams of starting a romantic relationship. When Tassi very roughly deflowers Artemisia he even answers her reproachful looks in the typical manner of an abuser by saying that she put the thought into his mind, ie, she provoked him.
Artemisia's teenage curiosity regarding sexuality and the male body are not only wilfully misconstrued as verbal consent, but as a welcome justification for one obscenity after another. Even the staging of a torture scene arouses the sadistic desires of heterosexual men in the audience.
The irony of it all is that quite a number of people will leave the cinema, their breasts swelling with pride having been to see a "feminist" film.
