Tulip Fever
starring Alicia Vikander, Dane Dehaan, Jack O’Connell, Holliday Grainger, Tom Hollander, Matthew Morrison, Kevin McKidd, Douglas Hodge, Zack Galifianakis, Judi Dench and Christoph Waltz
screenplay by Deborah Moggach and Tom Stoppard
directed by Justin Chadwick
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
Based on the novel of the same name (1999) by Deborah Moggach, Tulip Fever is a historical romantic drama set against the tulip mania of 1630s Holland. The tulip mania was a real thing, often considered to be the first speculative economic bubble. I was introduced to it in high school history class. Well heeled Dutch people went crazy bidding high prices for bulbs of the newly introduced tulip flower. The prices were motivated by rarity more than sheer beauty, I suppose. When the price of bulbs became demonstrably unhinged from their intrinsic value, the market for tulip contracts officially qualified as a speculative bubble. Bubbles inevitably burst - or deflate - and thousands were left penniless when tulip bulb prices collapsed in February 1637 and the Dutch government had to take a hand to prevent further trade.
Tulip Fever reminds me very much of Girl With the Pearl Earring (2003, directed by Peter Webber, starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson) because it’s set in the same place at roughly the same time, and both films excel at recreating the costumes and the domestic architectural environment of the characters. The fantastic affluence of wealthy Dutch merchants side-by-side with the relative grotesqueness of their lives. Those were detailed, realistic portrayals.
Christoph Waltz plays Cornelis Sandvoort, a wealthy peppercorn merchant in his second marriage to the much younger Sophia (Alicia Vikander), an orphan girl raised in a convent. Cornelis wants a child to carry on his name, but his age is against him. He can neither father a child nor satisfy his young wife, who finds solace in an affair with Jan van Loos (Dane Dehaan) an artist hired to paint a portrait of the pair - a vanity portrait demonstrating how the wealthy functioned as patrons of the arts. Van Loos is playing in the tulip market, and with the wealth he expects to earn he and Sophia plan to elope.
Meanwhile, the Sandvoort household servant, Maria, has an affair with a handsome fishmonger and becomes pregnant. Maria knows of Sophia’s affair with the painter, and she proceeds to blackmail her so that she can keep her place in their home after her lover the fishmonger disappears (he gets pressed into the Dutch navy and reappears a year later, to finish the film). Sophia hatches a plan with Maria to hide the servant girl’s pregnancy while faking one of her own, and then when the time comes to pass Maria’s child off as Cornelis’, then fake her own delivery death, freeing her to take off with the artist.
It’s a complicated plan, and complicated plans - like military operations - never go according to plan. The plot involves much tragedy of errors, as one happenchance leads to another: the fishmonger disappears without explanation, destroying Maria’s dreams; Sophia falls in love with the portrait painter; the painter loses a fortune in the tulip trade, destroying his and Sophia’s dreams.
The film was originally supposed to be released in 2015, but its release date was delayed by a couple of years. I wonder if that’s because it’s a Harvey Weinstein production (co-production), and in those years Weinstein was in the midst of his dramatic fall from grace over sexual misconduct allegations. Maybe distributors worried that Weinstein’s problems might affect, compromise or undermine the success of the film. I think it’s an excellent film, though.