SummaryIn 17th century Amsterdam, a married woman (Alicia Vikander) begins a passionate affair with an artist (Dane DeHaan) hired to paint her portrait. The lovers gamble on the booming market for tulip bulbs as a way to raise money to run away together.
SummaryIn 17th century Amsterdam, a married woman (Alicia Vikander) begins a passionate affair with an artist (Dane DeHaan) hired to paint her portrait. The lovers gamble on the booming market for tulip bulbs as a way to raise money to run away together.
With so much to look at and a plot to digest as thick as Dutch cocoa, it is not without a few problems, but I found this astonishing movie so rich and satisfying that I liked it in spite of itself. It’s the kind of guilty pleasure that sometimes confuses, but never bores. Color it flawed but gorgeous.
Tulip Fever is a film a-swirl in what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. The years-long anticipation of its arrival has only heightened the stakes for what is – and what maybe always would have been – a harmless historical romp through some flowers.
This is a reasonably good period drama. It does feature some fairly raunchy scenes, so it's perhaps not an ideal watch if your with your parents or similar but the story is intriguing and the cast do well in their performances and its somewhat thought provoking too, so not an overly bad film. I quite liked the cinematography too. I would recommend this film, yes.
At 107 minutes, Tulip Fever has been trimmed of every ounce of fat. But connective tissue, muscle and even the heart are gone too, leaving a lifeless frame.
17th century Amsterdam saw the explosion of the tulip bulb market, which provides the backdrop for this film's amorous intrigue. Alicia Vikander plays a woman who's sold to a rich merchant (Christoph Waltz), but falls for the young artist hired to paint her portrait (Dane DeHaan). The plots lines swirl around each to generate a vortex of dramatic complications that would make Shakespeare proud. As expected, the era allows for some lovely visuals, but also exposes the grittier side of the period. Even through the complex storytelling, the actors create compelling characters and elevate the narrative to a more acceptable level.
'Tulip Fever' is a jangled mess of a film that serves as a classic case of too many creative cooks in the kitchen. I'd love to know how many times the script was re-written, how many times Harvey Weinstein slashed the budget, and how many times the film was re-cut in post-production.
There's plenty to mourn as a result. One might assume that a cast that includes Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Jack O'Connell, Zach Galifianakis, Judi Dench, and Christoph Waltz would propel any film into Oscar territory. Yet 'Tulip Fever' proves that no cast can overcome a muddled script, shoddy sound design, and poor editing.
Worst of all, the movie likely ruined any future potential for a better film to be made about the actual historical event known as Tulip Mania that occurred during the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age. Given such fascinating source material, here's hoping someone at least makes a documentary about it.
It’s a timeless tale of love and betrayal and people doing **** things to people who are good to them, based on a 1999’s novel by Deborah Moggach who also wrote a screenplay for this.
Once upon a long time ago in Amsterdam: a married woman (Alicia Vikander) begins a passionate affair with an artist (Dane DeHaan) hired to work for her husband (Christoph Waltz). The lovers gamble on hot market for tulips to get the money for escaping together.
Also appearing, Judi Dench, Zach Galifianakis, Jack O’Connell, Holliday Grainger, Tom Hollander, Cara Delevingne and others.
This must be one of the more hated movies of 2017 I’ve come across: Metacritic score 37 out of 100, Rotten Tomatoes’s 8 out of 100. It’s far from disaster but I can’t say it’s good either.
To start with the positive, the movie looks gorgeous, the mid-17th century Amsterdam feels very lively and booming although we don’t see much of it, most events take place inside somewhere. The pictures added here really don’t do the movie justice but I didn’t find a better selection online.
The actors make their best of their material, although the characters are so one-note that only screen veterans in supporting roles (Waltz, Dench, Hollander) manage to give really memorable performances.
The young stars (Vikander, DeHaan) do adequate work and they have good enough chemistry to offer some steamy love-making scenes… but you can’t really compete with Waltz or Dench in terms of range or sheer presence, can you?
Based on acting and how the movie looks, the result would deserve a higher score… but the storytelling really makes a mess of everything.
In 107 minutes, there’s so many events and relationships and so little willingness to develop them properly that several major plot points or turns fall entirely flat and lose any believability or dramatic impact.
All in all, „Tulip Fever“ is disappointment. It’s certainly watchable if underwhelming… but it could have been good.
Still, I like both young stars and look forward to seeing them in other, better realised movies. It’s also interesting to note that Vikander is the new Lara Croft in „Tomb Raider'“ reboot coming in March.
The project has an unlucky history which is actually a fair bit more interesting than the final movie itself.
The shoots were originally planned in 2004, with Jude Law and Keira Knightley as leads and John Madden („Shakespeare in Love“) as director. However, the production was halted 12 days before the shooting because of changes in tax rules affecting film production in the UK.
Dreamworks had already built a massive set of the Amsterdam canals, and planted 12,000 tulips which were dead-headed.
The current production was shot in 2014 but the release was postponed for three years due to negative test screenings.
Well this didn't age well. You will understand when you see who's the producer. A brilliant cast wasted by an uneven film.
Has anyone seen Good Time and Blade Runner 2049? I heard it's pretty good. You should check it out before the year is over.
Alicia Vikander is fantastic in this but this film tries to be too smart for its own good to try and make up for it's narrative flaws. Vikander is fantastic in this and the production design is really good, it's just hard to ignore how poorly written this film is.