The
long-delayed period romance, “Tulip Fever,” comes to theaters amidst of flurry
of expectations spurred on by its disastrous production history and a
spectacularly botched theatrical release. The film originally played at Cannes
back in 2015, and was expected to get a prime awards season rollout that year,
but instead the film’s distributor–The Weinstein Company–ended up
unceremoniously disappearing it from sight.
Several
times since the film has been expected to get a national release, only to be
pulled from theater schedules at the last possible moment. The studio’s
hesitancy to let audiences have a look at it has led many to expect a wildly
entertaining train wreck, so it’s a bit disappointing to report that despite
its torrid affairs, pretend pregnancies, and not one, but two faked deaths, the
resulting film is mostly bland and forgettable.
Filmmaker
Justin Chadwick (“The Other Boleyn Girl”) directs from a script by “Shakespeare
in Love’s” Tom Stoppard and Deborah Moggach, based on
her novel. The film follows Sophia (Alicia Vikander), an orphan raised in a
convent, who manages to escape poverty by marrying wealthy “king of
peppercorns,” Cornelis Sandvoort
(Christoph Waltz). He longs for an heir, but their routine lovemaking doesn’t
deliver any results. Then Cornelis makes the mistake
of commissioning a portrait from a talented, but down-on-his-luck painter Jan
(Dane DeHaan), and no sooner does Jan set eyes on the
married woman than they’ve fallen into bed together. Meanwhile, there’s also a
helpful servant (Holliday Grainger) and her fishmonger lover (Jack O’Connell),
whose fates become intertwined with the painter and his new mistress.
What
follows is a plot which requires all of its characters to make the worst
possible decisions at any given opportunity. And it’s all set against the
backdrop of the underground tulip market in 17th century Amsterdam, with
frantic backroom dealings in which merchants buy and sell bulbs, putting their
livelihoods on the line in the hopes that they would come into possession of a
desirably rare bloom and make back the exorbitant price they paid for it.
Cara
Delevingne is also on hand (marking a reunion with
her “Valerian” costar DeHaan — though this film was
shot first) as a meddlesome prostitute, and Judi Dench at least delivers a
knowing performance as an enterprising abbess. Most entertaining of all is a
bonkers Zach Galifianakis, whose performance livens
things up, playing a character who might as well have been beamed in from the
moon.
“Tulip
Fever” is the kind of film that makes you wish for more of that kind of
entertaining ridiculousness that only occasionally rears its head. Clearly at
some point, the makers had aspirations of awards season glory, but with it
frequent tonal shifts, odd bits of humor, and soap opera plot contrivances,
that was clearly not to be.
That
disconnect may help explain why the studio was at such a loss for what to do
with the finished product; the messy ending and sporadic narration smacks of
studio meddling and re-editing. What’s left is a limp costume melodrama that
seems to have wilted before it even has a chance to fully bloom.
Visit
rochestercitynewspaper.com on Friday for additional film coverage, including a review of the romantic
comedy “Home Again” starring Reese Witherspoon.
This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2017.
