Review: Tulip Fever

One never knows why troubles alight upon one film and not another. In general, it never bodes well when a film's release is delayed multiple times as in the case of the film adaptation of Deborah Moggach's 1999 novel, Tulip Fever. Originally intended as a John Madden-directed vehicle for Jude Law, Keira Knightley and Jim Broadbent, the film now limps into theatres starring Oscar winners Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz and Judi Dench along with Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne. The film is directed by Justin Chadwick, who also directed The Other Boleyn Girl, which may already be a signifier that Tulip Fever may be a visually lush but bloodless work, and further proof that his work on the arresting 2005 fifteen-part BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Bleak House might have been an anomaly (Chadwick directed eight episodes, Susanna White seven).

Adapted by Moggach and the venerable Tom Stoppard, the story is set in 17th century Holland in the midst of the titular craze that gripped the country. Amidst this frenzy brews a melodrama involving the wealthy peppercorn nobleman Cornelis Sandvoort (Waltz), his much younger second wife Sophia (Vikander), and the struggling painter Jan Van Loos (DeHaan), whom Cornelis has commissioned to do a double portrait. From the start, it's made clear that the Sandvoort's marriage is one of security for Sophia, an orphan plucked from the convent run by the tulip-rearing Abbess (Dench). Rescued from poverty, Sophia feels obliged to give Cornelis the child he so desperately wants but after three years of marriage, the two are ineluctably childless despite the readiness of Cornelis' "little soldiers." When Sophia and Jan set eyes on one another, it isn't very long before the roilings of their desires manifest in breathless whispers, charged gazes, surreptitious touches, and intense yearnings to be with one another.

That's all well and good but for the incontestable fact that Vikander and DeHaan have zero chemistry, and so their feverish passion becomes very much a figment of the filmmakers' imagination. This is especially evident when compared to the secondary set of lovers in the film: Sophia's housemaid Maria (Holliday Grainger) and fishmonger William (Jack O'Connell). These two are practically radioactive with love and who can blame them: Grainger is earthy and radiant whilst O'Connell invests such hot feeling in each line. Maria and William's story is a far more interesting one by the very dint of their amorous fervour, yet their fates are entwined and defined by the central couple who, despite all their tumblings between the sheets and shots of a naked Vikander, fail to be anything but soporific.

In the early stages of the narrative, before Jan enters the picture, one thinks that the romantic complications may be between Sophia, Maria and William for Sophia and Maria are as close as sisters, or so the screenplay alleges. When it becomes clear that Jan is the one to stir Sophia's desires, one wonders if Tulip Fever might be a period version of The Postman Always Rings Twice with the lusty lovers plotting to do away with the older husband. Alas, neither scenario comes to fruition. Instead, the filmmakers dive headlong into circumstances (mistaken identities, real and fake pregnancies) that not only skirt the edges of unbelievability but farce. In fact, Tulip Fever might have been far better had it been played as a straight out farce since there's much running up and down the stairs, opening and closing of doors, and other bits that are so overdone that the film is almost a send-up of the period bodice-ripper.

Chadwick seems to believe that more is more - never mind that the frame is already bursting with either the hustle and bustle of the crowded populace on the streets or in bars and brothels or the richly detailed interiors of the Sandvoort's home, Chadwick lets the camera run amok, restlessly lurching about to and fro like some injured but determined drunk, and undermines the beautiful production design by Simon Elliott and the wonderful cinematography by Eigil Bryld, who manages to recreate the multiple framings to be found in the old Dutch masters in many of the early scenes. The camera obviously loves Vikander, whose tremulous intensity is defeated by the script's deficiencies. Waltz, on the other hand, evolves Cornelis from buffoonish cuckold to a more poignant figure by film's end.

Tulip Fever

Directed by: Justin Chadwick

Written by: Deborah Moggach, Tom Stoppard; based on the novel by Moggach

Starring: Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Dane DeHaan, Zach Galifianakis, Judi Dench, Jack O'Connell, Holliday Grainger, Matthew Morrison, Cara Delevingne, Tom Hollander, Cressida Bones, Kevin McKidd, David Harewood