Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander fall in love in the Tulip Fever trailer

Tulip Fever

by James White |
Published on

If there's one rule for unhappily married folk in period dramas, it should surely be never let a charismatic artist into your lives, even if you're desperate to have your success immortalised on canvas: it never ends well. That tale is told again in Tulip Fever, which has put out its first trailer.

The story this time comes courtesy of Deborah Moggach's 2001 novel, adapted for the screen by Shakespeare In Love's Tom Stoppard and directed by Justin Chadwick. Alicia Vikander stars as Sophie, who is wed to Cornelis Zandvoort (Christoph Waltz), a successful merchant because she's told it will help her life after growing up in an orphanage. While he's not an unkind sort, she's clearly unhappy being married to a much older man and when he commissions portraits of them, her passions are stirred by the artist, Jan Van Loos (Dane DeHaan).

Soon the pair are in love and plotting to run away together, figuring that they can use sales of tulip bulbs – a blossoming (sorry) business at the time in Amsterdam – to finance their escape.

Despite a cast that also boasts the likes of Judi Dench, Holliday Grainger, Jack O'Connell and Cara Delevingne, this one has lain dormant since it was shot in 2014 and is only now headed to cinemas. Stateside audiences will see it on July 15, but there's no sign of a UK date yet.

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