It's meant to be.

Paint — and how it interacts with light — is the essence of this visually exquisite, emotionally stunted film. Director Peter Webber and his production team intend to put us inside a Vermeer painting. It's a striking experience of light, color and composition. But it's also somewhat stifling.

Like the Tracy Chevalier novel on which it's based, the movie imagines a back story for the famous "Girl With a Pearl Earring" painted by Dutch master Jan Vermeer in 17th-century Delft. Griet (Scarlett Johansson) is a Dutch girl rented out as a servant to the Vermeer household after her working-class father is blinded in an accident.

Chez Vermeer makes the Osbornes look like the Brady Bunch. The home is a discordant jumble of spoiled children; gossipy housemaids; a shrewd, flinty mother-in-law (Judy Parfitt); a jealous, high-strung, perpetually pregnant wife (Essie Davis); a lecherous patron (Tom Wilkinson) who always drops by to fondle the "talent"; and Vermeer himself (Colin Firth), who does his best to keep things at an artistic distance.

But he takes an interest in Griet. Perhaps it's her inner stillness in the midst of so much mindless commotion. Perhaps it's the way she asks whether she should clean the studio windows (as ordered by others), noting that, in doing so, she'll change the quality of the light. Or perhaps it's because of her luminous skin and huge, watchful eyes.

Because she's the only one granted access to Vermeer's inner sanctum — his studio — Griet is viewed by everyone else with suspicion and envy. For good reason, as her relationship with Vermeer subtly evolves from a servant with potential to a trusted apprentice to the model for one of the most haunting portraits ever painted.

There's a hint of bashful Jane Eyre overpowering Mr. Rochester in their scenes together, which gives them a slight erotic tingle. But Webber wisely keeps the focus on the work and on the world that surrounds it. Inside Vermeer's cramped, candlelit studio, Griet is introduced to the mysteries of light, texture and shade, to the beauty of lapis lazuli, to the secrets of the camera obscura. Outside, she's caught up in the tactile, crowded world of Delft, a bustling mercantile city with a teeming street life to rival Franco Zeffirelli's Verona in "Romeo and Juliet."

Firth brings the requisite semi-banked fire to his role as the brooding artist whose ardor for his work is often heedless of the feelings of those around him. As always, the actor does the dashing thing flawlessly.

Johansson's earlier work in "Lost in Translation" has already established her as one to watch. Her remarkable resemblance to Vermeer's anonymous model aside, she gives a superbly nuanced, nearly mute performance, mostly consisting of a deft gesture, a nuanced expression, a flared nostril or a subtly shaded glance. She could be acting in a silent movie — so much so, you half expect Charlie Chaplin to hand her a flower.

Unfortunately, Webber lacks Chaplin's delicate way with a story. The transcendent richness of Eduardo Serra's cinematography and Ben van Os' production design only emphasizes the weakness of the script, which manages to be both slight and melodramatic. We're immersed in Vermeer's exquisite artistry, but we're kept distanced from the characters.

At the very end, we're invited to gaze briefly at Vermeer's masterwork and, in that minute and a half, we connect more vitally with what's onscreen than we have with anything in the preceding 97 1/2 minutes. And perhaps that's the movie's point.

Beauty can't be explained. It just is.