The boy turns to the girl after they first make love and asks her to marry him. She shakes her head, neither up nor down; likewise, her accompanying smile could mean yes or no. We can expect it means no, buut it's the kind of expression elusive enough for the boy to find hope in.

This is a film short on words but full of such looks; indeed, it is about one, the one captured in the titular painting. The Girl With A Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, is one of those great paintings which captures entire lives and distills them to a single moment in time. Like the Mona Lisa, the girl in Vermeer's painting has been rhapsodized about, her presence postulated, and now presented in an extrordinarily subdued film. Not a whole lot seems to happen in 'The Girl With A Pearl Earring,' but like the painting, there's more than enough going on under the surface.

The Girl is a Dutch servant named Griet (Scarlett Johansson), who is sent by her destitute parents to earn a living in the house of Vermeer (Colin Firth). Times are rough and money is short, and Vermeer's commissions barely enable his family - his wife and mother in particular -- to maintain their lavish lifestyle.

What you will see happen in the film is Griet inadverdently enchanting every man she comes across -- the butcher's apprentice (Cillian Murphy), Vermeer's lusty chief patron (Tom Wilkinson) and Vermeer himself, who makes the unprecedented decision to allow her to assist him in his studio. Eventually, of course, she poses for him. And that's what happens in the movie.

What also happens is that, in short scenes with very little dialogue, full and rounded characters are created, and their relationsips are burdened with great tension. Consider the character of the mother-in-law, who is a stern and unforgiving spinster, and yet eventually manages to defy every expectation we have about her by playing a key part in Vermeer's artistic process. And Vermeer's wife, too, is more than just a foil to nearly sefless Griet; her character's wrenching final moments perfectly depict someone who cannot comprehend the artistic process, no matter how much they try, and hates themselves for it.

Griet does understand the artistic process; Vermeer teaches her to see things in colors and shades of light, and this point of view excites her, although she knows her place and is loathe to step beyond it, as Vermeer entices her ever so slightly to do. Johansson, who with her white face and deep round eyes is the very definition of beguiling, affects a passive, subservient expression, and yet in the aforementioned scene where she sleeps with the young man who's pursued her, she shows that this character knows what she wants, how much she can get, and how to get it. She knows how other men look at her, too; the scene where Vermeer asks her to remove her ever-present cap is more erotic than any image of full disclosure could ever be.

Director Peter Webber and screenwriter Olivia Hatreed make very bold, deliberate choices with this film, and their reluctance to explain or to accentuate will frustrate some and enchant others. They have adapted the script from Tracy Chevalier's novel of the same name. I haven't read the book, but I must assume it is either very thin or the polar opposite of this film, which does what film is so good at it -- showing, but not telling.