AllMovie

Susan Vreeland's novel The Girl in Hyacinthn Blue was the source for this made-for-TV drama. Utilizing a complex flashback-within-flashback structure, the film chronicles the 300-year history of a lost painting said to have been created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. The story is framed by the present day narrative of an eccentric history teacher (Glenn Close) who has the inside track on the number of lives profoundly altered, for both good and ill, by the elusive painting. The teacher's tale interconnects individual stories of tragedy, romance, success, failure and even the Holocaust. Even the narrator herself has a personal and emotional stake in the supposed Vermeer. Advertised as the most expensive and ambitious project ever undertaken during the 52-year history of television's Hallmark Hall of Fame anthology series, Brush With Fate debuted February 2, 2003, on CBS.