Tulip Fever is a 2017 historical drama film directed by Justin Chadwick and written by Deborah Moggach and Tom Stoppard, adapted from Moggach's novel of the same name. It stars Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Jack O'Connell, Zach Galifianakis, Judi Dench, Christoph Waltz, Holliday Grainger, Matthew Morrison and Cara Delevingne. The plot follows a 17th-century painter in Amsterdam who falls in love with a married woman whose portrait he has been commissioned to paint.
Filmed in the summer of 2014, Tulip Fever was delayed numerous times before finally being released in the United States on September 1, 2017 by The Weinstein Company. It grossed $8 million worldwide against its $25 million budget.
Video Tulip Fever
Plot
Set in the Netherlands in the 17th century, during the period of the tulip mania, the film tells the story of an artist Jan (Dane DeHaan) who falls for a married young woman Sophia (Alicia Vikander) while he's commissioned to paint her portrait by her husband Cornelis (Christoph Waltz). The two invest in the risky tulip market in hopes of building a future together.
The story begins with 17 year old Sophia, an orphan, being betrothed to the elderly Cornelis. In return for the marriage, her sisters are able to travel to New Amsterdam (New York) in the new world, where they have an aunt awaiting them. Sophia is unhappy in the marriage, since Cornelis is not romantic and only concerned with bringing an heir to inherit his name. Cornelis has his friends show him their children, and there is talk of giving the new orphan bride Sophia six months to conceive and provide him with an heir. He already suffers from a mistake he made in the past, with his previous wife: she miscarried their first child and when Cornelis asked the doctor to save the second child over the wife, he feels that God punished him by taking his wife and his child away. Meanwhile, Sophia goes to a doctor to get checked, but the doctor turns out to be the unethical Dr. Sogh, who wants to impregnate Sophia himself. Sophia slaps him and runs away, back to her husband.
Cornelis decides to hire a painter, so that he may show off his beautiful young wife to people. Sophia agrees, but as soon as the young painter Jan arrives to paint the couple, he and Sophia fall in love. Jan sends a note to Sophia, asking her to send him a vase with tulips. She shows up at his door with the tulips, and they consummate their love.
Meanwhile, Sophia's friend, the housemaid Maria, is having an affair with the neighborhood fishmonger, Willem. Willem is also speculating in the tulip market, and is doing quite well - expecting to be independently prosperous and able to marry Maria, he even sells his business to another fishmonger. One day, Sophia borrows Maria's cloak and heads to a rendezvous with her adulterous lover. Willem, seeing Sophia in the cloak, mistakes her for Maria, and follows her to her rendezvous. Crushed by what he thinks is Maria's unfaithfulness, he goes to a pub to drown his sorrows. There a prostitute robs him of the large sum he has built up on the tulip market. When he tries to retrieve the money, he is beaten up and forcibly inducted into the navy for causing a ruckus.
Jan plots to escape to the new world - with Sophia, if possible - after having success of his own in the tulip speculation market. He hears that the nuns at St. Ursula (the convent Sophia came from) raise tulips in their gardens. Jan attempts to steal some of the bulbs, but is knocked out by the abbess of St. Ursula. When he regains consciousness, he apologises and the abbess gives him the bulbs Willem had bought before he was thrown into the navy.
Maria realises she is pregnant by Willem, which is diastrous for her; with Willem gone, the baby will be born out of wedlock. Sophia conspires with Maria: she will pretend to be pregnant instead, and when the baby is born, Sophia will pretend to die in childbirth, so she can leave to be with Jan, and Maria will stay with the baby to raise it herself.
When Maria finally gives birth to a daughter and Sophia pretends to die, Cornelis is griefstricken at the loss of his wife. Sophia, under her shroud pretending death, weeps as she now understands that Cornelis cared for her. While she is being carried away in a coffin, she regrets what she has done. When she later returns to the home, she catches sight of Cornelis lovingly cradling the baby, and senses that perhaps it's too late to set things right. She flees back to the convent where she was raised.
Jan has one last transaction that will get him enough money to let him and Sophia leave the city and also pay off all his creditors. He tasks his fool of a friend Gerrit with accomplishing this transaction, charging him not to get drunk along the way. Gerrit completes the transaction and then does get drunk. In the ensuing revelry he eats the cargo he was carrying. When he tells Jan and Jan's creditors how he ate the "onion," they all know they have been ruined. The tulip bubble has burst. Jan goes to find Sophia, but finds her bright blue silk cloak in the river instead, which she cast off while fleeing back to the convent. He thinks she has flung herself into the canal as a result of the crashed tulip market.
Willem, returning after his year in the navy, goes to see Maria at Cornelis's house. Maria is furious with him when he explains that he was in Africa, but they sort out their misunderstandings and reconcile. Cornelis, in the next room, overhears their loud quarreling and the reveal of the conspiracy. He makes his peace with the truth, and departs for the Indies, but only after first leaving the house to Maria, Willem, and the baby girl he loved as his own.
Some eight years later, Jan has nothing left except the paintings of his lover Sophia. The abbess of St. Ursula praises him for his talent, and gives him work repainting a mural in the church. When Jan arrives at the abbey, he sees Sophia as a nun and is pleased and smiles. The movie ends with the maid Maria and her fishmonger husband Willem eating dinner with their children. The golden rays of the sun are shining through the once gray house, and all ends happily.
Maps Tulip Fever
Cast
Production
The film was originally planned to be made in 2004 on a $48 million budget, with Jude Law, Keira Knightley and Jim Broadbent as lead actors, John Madden as director and Steven Spielberg producing through DreamWorks. However, the production was halted days before it was scheduled to start filming as a result of changes in tax rules affecting film production in the UK.
On July 8, 2013, the Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye reported that Justin Chadwick would direct the film with Alicia Vikander attached to star in the role of Sophia and that Matthias Schoenaerts was being sought for the male lead. Bamigboye reported that Chadwick together with producers Alison Owen and Harvey Weinstein, decided to cast Vikander for the film.
In 2014, Alison Owen partnered with Weinstein to restart the film after re-acquiring the rights to the film from Paramount Pictures. In October 2013, Dane DeHaan was in talks to join the cast. In February 2014, Christoph Waltz joined the cast. In April 2014, Holliday Grainger, Cara Delevingne, and Jack O'Connell joined the cast. In June 2014, Judi Dench was cast as the abbess of St. Ursula, who takes in orphaned children. That same month Tom Hollander, Cressida Bonas, and David Harewood joined the cast. In August 2014, Matthew Morrison joined. Deborah Moggach, author of the novel, also appears in the film. Harvey Weinstein offered Harry Styles the role of Mattheus, but the singer turned it down due to scheduling conflicts, and Matthew Morrison was cast instead.
The crew of Tulip Fever included cinematographer Eigil Bryld, production designer Simon Elliott, costume designer Michael O'Connor, hair and make-up designer Daniel Phillips and editor Rick Russell. Tom Stoppard adapted the screenplay for the film. The London-based Welsh portrait artist Jamie Routley did the original portraits that are seen in the film. Danny Elfman composed the film's score.
Filming
Filming took place at Cobham Hall in Cobham, Kent, Norwich Cathedral, Holkham (in Norfolk), Tilbury, (in Essex), Kentwell Hall (in Suffolk) and at Pinewood Studios on various dates throughout June and July in 2014. Filming also took place in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire.
Release
Footage from the film was screened in May 2015 at the 68th Cannes Film Festival. In December 2015, the first image of the film featuring Alicia Vikander and Christoph Waltz was released. The film was originally scheduled to be released in November 2015, but was pushed back to July 15, 2016 and then delayed again until February 24, 2017. It was then pulled from the schedule, and later moved to August 25, 2017. On August 16, 2017, the film was again delayed, this time being pushed back a week to September 1. The film premiered on August 13, 2017, at London's Soho House.
Box office
As of February 5, 2018, Tulip Fever has grossed $2.4 million in the United States and Canada and $5.9 million in other territories for a total of $8.3 million, against a production budget of $25 million.
In North America, Tulip Fever was projected to gross $1-2 million from 765 theaters in its opening weekend. It ended up debuting to $1.2 million ($1.5 million over the four-day Labor Day weekend) in what was the worst combined holiday weekend since 1998. Despite adding seven theaters in its second weekend, the film dropped 75.4% to $285,300, the 37th biggest such drop in history.
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 9% based on 53 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Tulip Fever is a lush, handsomely-mounted period piece undone by uninspired dialogue and excessive plotting." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized average rating to reviews, the film has an average score of 38 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film 1 star out of 4, saying, "Tulip Fever, which was shot in 2014 but only hitting theaters now after years of recutting, retooling and release-date reshuffling, should have been allowed to die on the vine ... The film just sits there onscreen like a wilting flower with nothing to nourish it."
Awards and nominations
Notes and references
Notes
References
External links
- Tulip Fever on IMDb
- Tulip Fever at Rotten Tomatoes
Source of article : Wikipedia
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