Girl With A Pearl Earring, the film version of Tracy Chevalier's much loved best-seller, sees Scarlett Johansson shooting her star even higher into the ascendant following the critical acclaim she received for Lost in Translation.

Cast as a servant girl who barely speaks, Johansson is utterly beguiling, conveying her character's maelstrom of emotions through facial expressions and body language.

Girl With A Pearl Earring concerns the relationship, as imagined by Chevalier, between renowned Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) and his muse.

Sixteen-year-old Griet (Johansson) is employed as the maid in Vermeer's modest dwellings, where she has an immediate effect on the reclusive owner.

Impressed by her spirit and lust for life, Vermeer begins to use Griet as the inspiration for a series of paintings depicting women in domestic settings.

In the process, she is immortalised as the central figure in one of his most famous works.

However, the girl's effect on Vermeer simultaneously causes uproar within the chaotic Catholic household.

The artist's volatile wife Catharina (Essie Davis) becomes insanely jealous of the pretty new arrival and Vermeer's 12-year-old daughter Cornelia (Alakina Mann) is so enraged by the favouritism afforded to Griet that she plots to have the maid fired.

Local butcher boy Pieter (Cillian Murphy), who is smitten with Griet, cannot bear the amount of time she spends alone with Vermeer, and the artist's wealthy benefactor, Master van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), becomes frustrated when Griet rebuffs his lascivious advances.

Caught in the eye of an emotional storm, Vermeer and Griet wrestle with their growing attraction, which gives birth to one of the greatest paintings ever created.

Beautifully framed by cinematographer Eduardo Serra and director Peter Webber, Girl With A Pearl Earring is an entrancing portrait of forbidden love that is at once heart-breaking and hauntingly beautiful.

Rating: 9/10