Movie Review: Tulip Fever

Last night, a friend of mine highly suggested that I watch this movie on Netflix called Tulip Fever. While the book with the same title was in stores long before the movie came out, I wanted to watch the movie when it came out in theaters back in '15; I had simply forgotten about it when other movies grabbed my attention. So I figured why not, let's see what this movie is about and how it holds up.

...I was not disappointed. 

I haven't done a movie review in ages, but I felt that this movie definitely deserved to be talked about. Tulip Fever takes place in 17th century Amsterdam during the tulip boom that had the country putting serious investments and spending a fortune on exotic Tulips that came from the East; the most rare being a white tulip with a red stripe called a "breaker", was the most coveted and most expensive; On the other side of the spectrum, a young woman marries a well-to-do merchant and they have a portrait painted them by a painter. Immediately the wife and the painter end up becoming star-crossed lovers and wind up in an affair that...well, I won't give away spoilers. 

Seriously loving this dress

However what I do want to put into focus, is the costume design. I absolutely loved the costumes. While I am not knowledgable about 17th century clothing, I can safely guess that the costume designer really did their homework. The detail that was put into these costumes were so on point, that they looked very authentic like the characters had walked right out of a painting. From an artistic perspective, I noticed there was a lot of composition that even mimicked portrait paintings. For example, the entire movie had settings that sometimes had dark backdrops but always had a pop of color to show how light and bold they wanted the focal points to be. Another thing that I noticed was that most of the aristocracy in this film (and in historical paintings that I have seen in museums), mostly wore darker colors but still had pops of bold contrasting color. This of course showed off their wealth. 

 

Like in the photo below, there definitely were options to exotic colors that money could buy. For the painting the main character, Sophia, wore this gorgeous and bold ultramarine gown specifically for the painting. Not only did this show wealth but it also gave the eye a focal point in the painting and in the movie. 

The other thing that piqued my interest, was the tulip mania itself. While they didn't really show too much about the tulips or how the surplus bubble historically effected the Dutch economy (it almost seems as if it was more of a side story rather than the main focus of the movie), I thought it was pretty clever how they tied it into the storyline and how it affected some of the characters. This pivotal part of Dutch history really piqued my interest and made me want to look for more information. To my surprise, the tulip mania was as popular as pokemon trading cards were back in the late 90's. Everyone wanted to throw their hat in the ring and be part of the investment. However when the bubble burst, there were disastrous results leaving people penniless and destitute.

I definitely would recommend this movie to anyone who loves period dramas, romantic thrillers (yep this counts as one for sure), historical costuming and even art history. There's definitely something in this film for everyone.

This gorgeous striped Tulip was caused by a breaker virus. As a result of it's rarity, it was made the most exotic and expensive tulip in Amsterdam during the Tulip Mania.