This overheated French entry in the often disappointing Struggling Artist Biopic genre plays like a third-generation photocopy of the 1989 Isabelle Adjani-Gerard Depardieu drama, Camille Claudel, which was no great shakes anyway. The 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, Europe's first female master, may be an important historical figure, but details of her life are sketchy here, and Artemisia's central conflict — her proto-feminist struggle to use nude male models — seems frivolous and anachronistic. It doesn't help that Valentina Cervi is no more expressive than an easel; casting her opposite Miki Manojlovic (Underground) and Michel Serrault (Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud), two of the world's finest actors, was borderline cruel. C
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