Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriter Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel of the same name by Tracy Chevalier. Scarlett Johansson stars as Griet, a young 17thcentury servant in the household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer played by Colin Firth at the time he painted Girl with a Pearl Earring 1665 in the city of Delft in Holland. Other cast members include Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, and Judy Parfitt.

Griet Scarlett Johansson is a shy girl living in the Dutch Republic in 1665. Her father, a Delftware painter, has recently gone blind, rendering him unable to work and putting his family in a precarious financial situation. To help matters, Griet is sent to work as a maid in the household of famed painter Johannes Vermeer Colin Firth. Griet works hard, almost wordlessly, in the lowest position in a harsh hierarchy, doing her best despite spiteful treatment by one of Vermeers children. While she is on a routine shopping trip outside the house, a butchers son, Pieter Cillian Murphy, notices Griet and falls in love with her, even though she is slow to return his affections.As Griet cleans Vermeers studio, which his wife Catharina Essie Davis never enters, the painter begins to converse with her and encourages her appreciation of painting, light and color. Vermeer gives her lessons in mixing paints and other tasks, taking care to keep this secret from his wife, who would react with anger and jealousy if she found out that her husband was spending time with Griet. In contrast, Vermeers pragmatic motherinlaw, Maria Thins Judy Parfitt, sees Griet as useful to Vermeers career. ........

Source: Wikipedia