Artemisia

(Miramax)

Agnès Merlet turns the story of Europe's "first acknowledged female painter" into a French version of Masterpiece Theatre. The year is 1610, the city is Rome, and 17-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi (Valentina Cervi) wants to be a painter, like her artist father, Orazio (Michel Serrault) -- but when she becomes the pupil of his collaborator, the Florentine painter Agostino Tassi (Miki Manojlovic), she winds up studying Agostino's anatomy, not to mention techniques that go beyond art. Cervi, Serrault, and Manojlovic do good work, but Merlet lionizes these three worthy painters as if they were Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.