An artist falls for a young married lady whilst he's commissioned to paint her portrait in the course of the Tulip mania of seventeenth century Amsterdam.
Like many complex novels crammed into 100-page screenplays, Tulip Fever is a mess of too many subplots, all awkwardly condensed and fighting for screen time.
Under close analysis, none of this elaborate subterfuge makes much sense, but the film is so polished in its technical proficiency that I found the absence of logic forgivable.
This tone-deaf costume drama takes a preposterous story and tells it clumsily, with strange choices all around and most of the plot turns either confusing or silly.