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09/14/2017 12:01 AMRated R
Tulip Fever is a new romantic tragedy from director Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) based on the popular 2000 novel by Deborah Moggach. Set in 17th century Amsterdam, Tulip Fever tells the story of two young people desperate to find a way to be with one another despite seemingly unsurmountable obstacles (one is married and the other is seemingly too poor to change his circumstances) during a time when the local society folks were so obsessed with tulip flowers that they ruled the underground market.
Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl and The Light Between Oceans) is Sophia Sandvoort, a young woman who was orphaned as a child and raised by nuns. When a wealthy merchant named Cornelis Sandvoort (Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained) choses her to be his wife, the nuns who raised Sophia encourage her to go with him and be his wife, convinced that this would be Sophia’s best chance at happiness, or at least comfort and stability, in life. Cornelis is a decent man, if a bit of a windbag as a local man describes him, and he treats Sophia well. He is older than Sophia and a widower, having lost his first wife during childbirth years earlier. Desperate to be a father and have a son to whom he can pass down his name and all of his earthly goods, Cornelis tries to make his young wife happy and keep her healthy so she can bear him a child.
After three years of marriage with no pregnancy, Cornelis starts to get antsy, unsure of why his wife cannot conceive a child by him. It is around this time that Cornelis hires a relatively unknown young artist to paint a portrait of him and Sophia. Jan Van Loos (Dane DeHaan of A Cure for Wellness and The Amazing Spider-Man 2) is a struggling artist who lives the life of a young bachelor, rooming with his close friend Gerrit (Zach Galifianakis of The Hangover and Keeping Up with the Joneses) since neither can afford to even live on his own.
Jan notices Sophia’s beauty immediately and is taken with her in every way. He begins sketching and painting only her, drawn to her. It isn’t long before Sophia finds herself drawn to Jan, too, and they begin a scandalous affair that, if discovered, could ruin theirs and others’ lives.
Eventually desperate for any way to be with Jan, Sophia devises a plan to slip away from Cornelis without him ever truly knowing that he has been betrayed. Sophia essentially switches places with her housekeeper named Maria (Holliday Grainger of Jane Eyre and Cinderella) who also coincidentally is desperate to get out of a situation in which she finds herself after the love of her life, Willem (Jack O’Connell of Unbroken and Starred Up), abandons her.
The intersecting storylines of the tulip craze that swept Amsterdam in the 1630s, the love affair between Maria and Willem, and, of course, the love affair between Sophia and Jan weave back and forth, sometimes somewhat interestingly, but somewhat boring most of the time. The most prominent storyline, of Sophia and Jan’s love and their attempt to escape their current lives to be able to be with one another, is the most entertaining and attention-grabbing, but the lengths to which Sophia goes to escape Cornelis (who is by no means a bad man, though maybe a bit dull and pompous) seem far-fetched and somewhat ridiculous after a while, particularly when the end of the plan comes into fruition, but doesn’t turn out exactly as scheduled.
Tulip Fever does not rage like a fever. Instead, it steadily marches on at a slow pace, intent on affecting the viewers despite a lack of chemistry between its main stars.
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