Brush with Fate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brush with Fate was a made-for-TV film debuted on February 2, 2003, on CBS. It followed the life of an imaginary painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer as it passes through the hands of various people. The film was based on Girl In Hyacinth Blue, a novel by author Susan Vreeland, and starred Glenn Close and Ellen Burstyn.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Richard is a new art teacher at a high school. Cornelia Englebrecht plays as a history teacher who invites Richard to see a painting of a young girl at a table, which she believes to be a genuine Vermeer, where she tells him stories, which are portrayed as flashbacks about the people who owned the painting in the past. All of the stories take place in Holland, and the flashbacks happen mostly before the one preceding it. The first story, from the late 1800s, involved a romance and had flashbacks within flashbacks. Another story took place in the early 1700s when a baby was abandoned during a flood after a dike break. The painting accompanied the baby and was intended to be sold for the baby's expenses.

In the next story, a man left a university to take a job working with the machinery used for the dikes. He got interested in a servant girl who was punished by being put in stocks, and became involved romancically.It is revealed in this story where the baby came from.

The next story was very brief, and in it, a woman, who was unsuccessful in bidding for the painting at an auction, seemed to know more about the painting than the auctioneer. The next story revealed how Vermeer came to paint the girl's picture.

Tagline: A mystery hidden for generations. Now the truth will finally be revealed.

  • Ellen Burstyn – Rika
  • Glenn Close – Cornelia Englebrecht
  • Thomas Gibson – Richard
  • Phyllida Law – Maria
  • Kelly Macdonald – Aletta
  • Ger Apeldoorn – Man in Black
  • Patrick Bergin
  • Kieran Bew – Adrian
  • Daniël Boissevain – Sol
  • Horace Cohen – Faculty Man
  • Jenne Decleir – Young Laurens
  • Katja Mira Herders – Tannske
  • Marcel Jonker – Willem
  • Hugo Konings – Young Man
  • Caro Lensen – Joanna
  • Roef Ragas – Stijn
  • Thekla Reuten – Saskia
  • Erik van Beekum – Angry dike worker
  • Erwan van Buuren – Fritz
  • Laurien Van den Broeck – Magdalena
  • Carly Wijs – Faculty Woman

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