Colin Firth as Jan Vermeer in A Girl with a Pearl Earring

From Variety:
Girl With A Pearl Earring is an intelligent, visually ravishing adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel about the Dutch master Vermeer and the model for one of his most famous paintings. With concision and well-chosen detail, Peter Webber's exceedingly accomplished first feature beautifully evokes the world the artist inhabited 340 years ago while deftly and discreetly delineating the personal intrigue within his teeming household. With its literary pedigree, artsy period backdrop, refined Euro air and wondrous central performance by emerging star Scarlett Johansson, who is receiving concurrent raves for her work in Lost in Translation, pic has all the ingredients to become an international specialized circuit hit. /.../

Courtesy of Ben van Os' vibrant production design, which is intersected by canals and is populated as much with livestock as it is with humanity, the thriving mercantilist Holland of the time jumps to life /.../

Script by Olivia Hetreed jettisons the book's first-person p.o.v., probably wisely in that the approach preserves Griet's mysteriousness, but is quite faithful in tone and spirit. A former editor and documaker, Webber maintains an admirably restrained hold on the material while still keeping the action lively and intriguing. Drama tips into too-overt melodrama on a couple of occasions, however, notably in Van Ruijven's one-dimensional lechery and Catharina's overweening jealousy.

Arching over everything is the film's look, which in cinematographer Eduardo Serra's exceptionally skilled hands is that of a Vermeer painting from beginning to end. The jumbled textures and colors of the home's family quarters are set off by the austere loveliness of the artist's soft-hued studio, which was the setting of so many of his works. Hugely evocative, the studied approach of approximating the Vermeer look, with light slanting in from the side, never feels stilted or fussy, and an emotionally climactic zoom in on Griet striking her pose for the picture, earring finally in place, is breathtaking.

While physically and dramatically credible, Firth is reserved as the guarded artist. Davis as his wife conveys the brittleness of a woman living permanently near the breaking point, and Parfitt has her moments as the matriarch who quietly sympathizes with her son-in-law more than with her daughter.

In a film of outstanding craft contributions, noteworthy are Dien van Straalen's costumes and, particularly, Alexandre Desplat's supple, beautifully nuanced score.

From IndieWire: "The film, like Vermeer's painting, is richly colored and deeply textured."

From Jeff Wells's column: "There was some pre-festival heat about Peter Webber's Girl With a Pearl Earring. /.../ Firth's Vermeer is the strongest performance by far. I believed in him every step of the way -- the burning intensity, conjugal weaknesses, repressed longings and hints of lechery."

From USA Today: Chevalier loves the movie. "It was so beautifully done, I burst into tears," she says. "It had been my baby. Now she's grown up and gotten married and had her own life, and she's a beautiful bride. They captured something that I was looking for when I wrote the book."