What can you really say about a movie that’s too stupid for words? How do you explain that the blatant pandering of mommy porn is not improved by a 17th-century Amsterdam setting? How does a film with so much sex remain so dull? And how on earth do you convey to the Weinsteins that, instead of delaying a picture repeatedly, they should have shelved it entirely? I guess all I can really say for certain at this point is that Tulip Fever obviously left me with more questions than answers.
Not since my early teen years of staying up late to catch Zalman King’s Red Shoe Diaries on Showtime have I been this disappointed in soft-core porn. (Bear in mind that this was long before the internet was a thing, so don’t judge me too harshly on that count). The real issue with Tulip is that I remain perplexed as to how it turned out so badly. It’s got a top-notch cast, great production values, an interesting narrative backdrop and best-selling source material — so what went wrong?
Well, for starters, the source material seems to have hamstrung the film’s writers. A convoluted contortion of subplots and meandering character arcs have been awkwardly truncated in places and excessively indulged in others, resulting in a chaotic miasma of cliche and uninspired scripting. This is a film in which one of the central characters, a predictably starving artist played by Dane DeHaan, abruptly exclaims to no one in particular, “I’m in love!” and then promptly sets out to arbitrarily advance that particular subplot. He also engages in the speculative tulip trade, because … it’s in the title, I guess?
More damning than the tepid dialogue is the utter absurdity of the script’s plot mechanics. There’s not exactly a lack of conflict, but there is the complete and utter absence of anything resembling an antagonist — unless you consider that the protagonist might be pulling double duty. The film follows Sophia (Alicia Vikander), an orphan married off to a wealthy trader (Cristoph Waltz) in the hopes of a life of luxury and convenience. After several years of failing to deliver an heir to her patron/spouse, Sophia inexplicably falls for DeHaan’s young portrait painter and then attempts to pull a shell-game con with her maid’s gestating fetus in order to fake her own death and runaway with her paramour. So what we have here is a story that follows its least sympathetic character through a series of increasingly misguided decisions that lead effectively nowhere. Are you buying your tickets yet?
Adding to the list of incomprehensible decisions on the part of the filmmakers are appearances from Dame Judi Dench and Zach Galifianakis, an onscreen pairing I had to see to believe — and even that was a letdown. So does Tulip Fever serve any rational purpose? Not unless you’re someone who absolutely, positively has to see an overwrought period melodrama with plenty of sex scenes but a total lack of sex appeal. Does such a person exist? God, I hope not. Rated R for sexual content and nudity.
Now Playing at Carolina Cinemark, Regal Biltmore Grande.
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