Painting a Frenzied Picture of Coming of Age in ‘Artemisia’

No Renaissance maiden ever got sprung from a convent faster than Artemisia Gentileschi, widely regarded as Western civilization’s first major female painter. The way French filmmaker Agnes Merlet tells it in her overheated “Artemisia,” the 17-year-old girl somehow manages to find a mirror big enough in which to pose for a nude self-portrait.

Bam! The scandalized mother superior summons the girl’s elderly father, Orazio (Michel Serrault), a renowned Roman painter who immediately realizes his talent has passed on to his daughter. Slam! He’s yanked Artemisia (Valentina Cervi) out of there, whereupon she’s soon exclaiming, “I’ll never get anywhere if I can’t paint naked men!” Pow! A hunky young fisherman is dropping his drawers so that they won’t, as Artemisia explains, “break the flow of your body.”

Oh, for a soupcon of Bressonian gravity. With her pow-in-the-kisser style, Merlet starts in such frenzied high gear that when she gets to her story’s well-orchestrated payoff, you feel that its considerable impact would have been so much greater had she built rather than streaked toward it. Actually, Merlet has a fine sense of structure and skill with her actors, but she leaves you feeling that starting out in such a needlessly fevered pitch has a lot to do with feminist fervor, working us up instead of trusting us to comprehend the quite stark implications of the fact that, in 1610 Rome, women weren’t supposed to be painting any kind of pictures, let alone anatomically correct renderings of naked male torsos.

Orazio gets a choice papal commission, painting the frescoes in a quite large church, but he must share it with the up-and-coming Florentine, Agostino Tassi (Miki Manojlovic). Deciding that she’s learned all she can from her father, Artemisia persuades him to let her go off to the beach to learn perspective from the virile Agostino. His Casanova reputation seems to be completely unknown to the trusting Gentileschi, who has always dutifully painted exactly what his patrons requested and has apparently lived a more sheltered and genteel life than we might have imagined.

Actually, both father and daughter are innocents: When Agostino inevitably seduces Artemisia, he is genuinely shocked to discover she’s a virgin.

Up until then Merlet’s tone has been so hysterical that she invites you to snigger at the lovers (and a whole lot of other hot ‘n’ heavy orgying as well). In his enraged naivete, Orazio sues Tassi, accusing him of raping his daughter in hopes of forcing him to marry her to save her honor. (Never mind that Tassi is already married, although separated.)

The ensuing trial brings out all the hypocrisy, cruelty and severe puritanism you would expect of the times. Amazingly, at its fade-out this lush period piece strikes a note of maturity, realism and wisdom--leaving you to wish you could say the same for all that has gone before it. Perhaps Merlet, as a filmmaker, was growing up with her heroine.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong, graphic sexuality and nudity. Times guidelines: The film, originally rated NC-17 and re-rated on appeal without cuts, has much frontal nudity, considerable blunt sex.

‘Artemisia’

Valentina Cervi: Artemisia

Michel Serrault: Orazio

Miki Manojlovic: Agostino

A Miramax Zoe presentation. Director Agnes Merlet. Producer Patrice Haddad. Executive producers Lilian Saly, Patricia Allard, Daniel Wuhrmann. Screenplay by Merlet, with the collaboration of Christine Miller; adaptation and dialogue by Merlet. Cinematographer Benoit Delhomme. Editor Guy Lecorne. Costumes Dominique Borg. Music Krishna Levy. Production designer Antonello Geleng. Set decorator Emita Frigato. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Westside Pavilion, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-0202, and the Town Center, Bristol at Anton, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, (714) 751-4184 or (714) 777-FILM (#086).