Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful...
Review: my mother rented this movie for me, knowing that i love foreign films, especially french ones. i was sort of hesitant, not knowing what it was about, so i watched it, and i loved it. everything from the way it was filmed, to the characters was great. and now that i've read some of the reviews, people are saying that they didn't like it because it wasn't true. i didn't even know artemisia was a real painter, i just enjoyed the story. so if you want to see a movie, and don't particularly care whether it's accurate or not, see it, because it's worth it. innaccurate or not, it was still done beautifully.
Rating: 
Summary: Historically true?
Review: Outstanding acting and photography. This film is poinant for its time. I wonder how much of it was actually true. Tends to be a bit slow in parts but is worth staying with.
Rating:
Summary: Full of something.....
Review: The movie of Artemisia's life, and those around her, focuses on a young girl of 17, trying to further herself in the art world through work and learning, during a time period (1600) that was unwelcoming to femaile artists. She is growing into her own and represents the real life artist, Artemisia Gentileschi quite well, although they appear(according to the self portrait she painted) to look slightly different. The movie is wonderfully put together, from the glorious beach imagery, to the poetic dialogue between Artemisia and her tutor of the arts, Agostino Tassi. Although the movie may or may not have solid backing for the real relationship between her teacher, the film is beautiful and represents growth, passion for something that Artemisia held dear, and relationships between people. The film was something I remembered well, not just the average foriegn film. Loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and inspiring
Review: This beautiful movie is founded on historical fact. Artemisia was a real woman, immensely talented, and truly someone who blazed a womanly trail in a man's world. Much past that, it's not at all clear how much fiction mixed in to make a watchable story.
Ignoring any documentary failings, this does make fair drama. Her father encouraged and trained her as an artist into her teens. At that point, he knew that she needed other teachers, even though the schools were open only to men. He apparently didn't know that she was developing into a woman as well as an artist, or blotted that fact from his fatherly mind. He called on a talented co-worker to continue her training.
Therein lies the complexity. That working relationship was already difficult because of professional jealousies, financial power-tripping, and jockeying for the commissions that paid the bills. Throw in a beautiful young lady who's just opening the doors to womanhood, and add a French scriptwriter. The result is tempestuous, and a net loss to all concerned: father, daughter, and tutor/lover. Artemisia's eventual happy ending happens long after the last scene, and appears only as a brief note before the credits.
One point ties the whole of the movie together: the Artemisia character's singleness of mind, her total passion for visual image, even ahead of her physical passions. The father is the character that has my sympathy. He truly wanted what he thought was a good future for his daughter. I think no one was more horrified than him, not even Artemisia herself, at physical interrogation his legal action imposed on her.
//wiredweird
Rating:
Summary: Well done period piece!
Review: This film deals with an episode in the girlhood of one of the first women to be taken seriously as a professional artist, Artemisia Gentileschi. Had her father Orazio had a suitable son about the place, Artemisia would most likely have had a more conventional girl's life of stirring sauces, sewing, and keeping house for Papa. (Nothing wrong with domesticity, by the way. Wouldn't mind it myself. It just wasn't right for her.) But there was no son so she worked in the family business which happened to be turning out paintings for wealthy patrons and the Church. To his credit, her father attempted to have her admitted to schools for formal artistic training, but although her talent was outstanding, her sex was against her. She sought out informal instruction from an artist working with her father. The lessons soon included training in lovemaking as well. (I, for one, would like to know what she did to avoid pregnancy! ) When her father discovered what was going on, he went ballistic. He called in the authorities which only made things much, much, worse. The Italian landscape was gorgeous, the clothing and buildings looked real (women's clothes in period, casual ones anyway, looked really comfortable), and the acting (in clear French) was outstanding. Highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Politically incorrect, and thought provoking
Review: This film is a must-see for feminists and art historians although (or perhaps precisely BECAUSE) it may make you angry. It is a beautiful, intensely sympathetic study of the young Artemisia Gentileschi, her struggles to learn and grow as an artist in a society that makes it very difficult for her to do so, and her relationships with the men in her life. Artemisia has no desire to be the feminist role model that she later became (how could she? The word and concept of "feminism" didn't exist in her day), she just needed to paint. The part of this movie that infuriated feminists is its portrayal of her relationship with her much older and very disreputable teacher Tassi as consensual, rather than as a violent rape, followed by a relationship in which Artemisia reluctantly cooperated because he had promised her marriage. According to modern definitions, of course, Tassi was guilty of some form of rape, whether Artemisia said "yes" or "no," because she was only 17 at the oldest, and he took advantage of his position of power. But there may be some truth in the movie's version of their relationship; Artemisia wouldn't be the first or the last young woman to have a crush on an older teacher, and to try out her powers of sexual attraction without fully understanding the consequences. It's true that the movie probably whitewashes Tassi's character in order to portray his relationship with Artemisia as a love story. In the actual trial transcript, Artemisia mocked him bitterly when they applied the thumb-screws to her hands during testimony, saying, "This is the wedding ring you promised me!" If she had ever felt any affection for him, it was gone by then. But if you allow the film some leeway for artistic license, it presents a fascinating study of how even a seemingly devastating experience like the rape trial and scandal could be part of an artist's growth. Artemisia's later career was not that of a poor, wronged victim; she went on to become a very successful painter.
Rating:
Summary: There are only stories about this painter, not THE true stor
Review: When the film came out in the U.S. in May, 1998, art historian Mary Garrard, who has written a book on Artemisia, along with feminist Gloria Steinnem put up a website attacking the film as untruthful in presenting what they say was Artemisia's rape by her teacher, Agostino Tassi. But as feminist Germaine Greer points out in her chapter on Artemisia in her book on women painters, the Obstacle Race, the rape trial transcripts are not transparent, and there is evidence that suport's Merlet's construction. (They may be found in an appendix to Garrard's book.) Garrard spins them her way (Artemsia was raped, didn't love Tassi; Greer spins them hers (Artemisia was raped, but came to love her rapist); Merlet spins them hers (Merlet loved her rapist from the start). Merlet's account of Artemisia is psychologically complex and is realy intersted in a feminism that departs from the standard rape narrative (woman undone permanently by traumatic experience caused by a man). Garrrd's accpunt was savaged bya number of feminist reviewers, adn most recently calleneged (in a friendly way) by Griselda Pollock in Differncing the Canon and by R. Ward Bissell in his book, Artemisia Gentileschi. The film is one of many fictonal afterlives, including a play by Sally Clark aind three novels, three of which have been translated into English. These are Anna Banti's, Marine Bramly's (the basis for the film) and Alexandra Lapierre's. They are entitled _Artemisia_. Raudi Jamis's French novel, also called Artemisia, has not been translated. In any case, taking Merlet's film on its terms and in relation to alternative feminist readings of Artemisia's life and paintings, I think one will find it intellectually refreshing in its departures from American "pop" feminism, aesthetically pleasing, and emotionally moving. If it gets you to go read the trial transcripts and to look at Artemisia's paintings, so much the better.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the true story...
Review: When this movie was first released, due to the outcry from the feminist and art history communities, Miramax had to remove their claim that it was "the true story of the first female painter in art history." Actually, it is practically a complete inversion of Artemisia Gentileschi's real story...she was in fact raped by Tassi (the 'love interest' in the movie) and maintained her stand *against* him even under torture (as is documented in the records of the trial). The film romanticizes and sexualizes her and their relationship to an almost soft-porn level while giving hardly any screen time to her actual work and using her paintings out of context...which is a shame, because the real story of this remarkable woman would have been just as dramatic if not more so.
Rating: 
Summary: Painful overacting
Review: While there were some redeeming qualities in this film, I was mostly struck by the painfully overly dramatic acting. I quit halfway through. I was disappointed in that because I love well-done foreign films about humane characters. This one failed, for me.
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