Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is the year’s sexiest and most rapturously romantic love story
Film Reviews Movie Review
Love at first sight is a fairy-tale fantasy that grows less beautiful the more you think about it. Can you really love someone if you don’t know them? And how can you know them at a single glance? Céline Sciamma’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, which has to be the most rapturously romantic movie of the year (if not of the last few), is a story of love at umpteenth sight. For two hours, the film’s characters—two women who meet on the edge of society and propriety—never stop studying each other, their eyes sweeping across candlelit rooms and windswept cliffs, the increasing intensity of their gaze and simmer of their passion melting the barriers between them. To fall for someone, the French filmmaker posits, is to really see them. And to see them requires time and attention—a process of discovery that only begins with that first look.
What we’re watching is a seduction, mutual and very gradual, and the movie seduces its audience, too, drawing us in with the striking vividness of its imagery and the quiet patience of its storytelling. It takes a minute to even parse the details of the plot. Why, we wonder for a brief stretch, has a young painter, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), arrived by sea to a secluded island in Brittany? It’s 1760, and, as it’s soon revealed, she’s been commissioned by the wealthy matriarch (Valeria Golino) of the family estate to produce a portrait of her daughter, Héloïse. The painting will be a gift to a suitor, a kind of receipt of receptiveness to the Milanese stranger who wants to marry the young woman. Except that Héloïse isn’t especially interested in marrying, and has hence refused to sit for any of the painters that have come before. Partially, it’s the circumstances of the arrangement: Héloïse’s sister was the gentleman’s first choice of a bride, before she fell (or possibly jumped) to her death.
We first see Héloïse, played by the French movie star Adèle Haenel, the way the painter does: as a figure of mystery and allure and no small amount of sadness, striding across the grassy sprawl of the property, her back to the camera, a sudden gust of wind blowing her hood down to reveal a head of blond hair. It’s the first detail Marianne commits to memory. To get the job done, she’ll have to do some posing of her own, pretending to be there simply as company for her subject, when in fact she’s drawing a mental picture of Héloïse’s anatomy and features—the arc of her earlobe, the way she crosses her hands while sitting—then putting it to canvas in secret. This element of deception provides an ache of moral dilemma. Marianne isn’t just lying to the person with whom she spends her afternoons. In capturing her image without her consent, she’s hastening Héloïse’s passage into a life she doesn’t want.
Then again, Marianne may have reasons other than guilt to be bothered by the prospect of someone whisking away her new companion, especially once both women begin to let their guards down and get to know each other. “It explains all your looks,” Héloïse says, wounded, when she learns the truth. But of course it doesn’t explain them, not entirely. In Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, the subterfuge of the painter’s process is at once a metaphor and a catalyst for the inconvenient blossoming of infatuation: the private motives of stolen glimpses, wandering eyes acting on directive of the heart. Not that Marianne’s yearning runs one way. To watch this film about watching—at times, it plays like a gallery of mirrored, voyeuristic close-ups—is to be made a silent third party in a game of hesitant, reciprocal courtship. Though not quite a two-hander, Portrait finds its drama in the intensifying, electrifying chemistry between its leads, unspoken until it finally isn’t. Their first consummation is verbal, not physical: an exchange of intimate observations, the kind of tics of personality that only the besotted notice. It’s as sexy as any sex scene.
This is a quantum creative leap for Sciamma, herself a keen observer of behavior. (Her previous films, like Tomboy and Girlhood, were rich with character detail.) Time traveling to an old world seems to unlock the full scope of her passion and insight. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is one of those period pieces that truly envelops the viewer in the period it recreates; we are invited not just to luxuriate in the low light and routines of another era, but to experience its more deliberate pace, the way the minutes might have passed then and there. At the same time, the film’s soul is defiantly modern. Sciamma recognizes her heroines, drawn into the tractor beams of each other’s attraction, as kindred spirits of resistance—Héloïse balking at the life her sister escaped only in death, Marianne navigating around the limitations put upon female artists in the 18th century. There’s a subplot, touching if maybe not crucial, about the family’s housekeeper (Luàna Bajrami), seeking reprieve from the hand she’s been dealt as a young woman. And Sciamma almost entirely removes men from the mise-en-scène—through their general absence, but also through pointed obscuration. (We never see the face of Héloïse’s husband-to-be, for example.)
It’s worth mentioning that Sciamma and her star, Haenel, were once an item. That’s not mere tabloid trivia. Their history together may inform the film’s own gaze, bittersweet in its longing: the way Héloïse looms over the picture like a beacon of beauty and a specter of melancholy, the way Sciamma frames her as a radiant object of desire without objectifying her. Is Marianne’s canvas so different from the lens of a filmmaker? From its very first scene, which cuts among the watchful eyes in a room full of art students, Portrait Of A Lady On Fire conflates romantic and creative pursuit, arguing for curiosity—a genuine interest in the deeper truth of who or whatever you’re fixated upon—as the key to both. Notably, Marianne’s first attempt at a painting is a failure, because she can’t yet see Héloïse, in all of her emotional texture. It’s only when the two become collaborators, when one becomes a willing subject, that they’re able to create something meaningful together. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire does just that, straight up to its all-timer of an ending, a supernova of feeling expressed and provoked. For us, watching a watcher, it’s love at last sight.
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is now available on Hulu.
27 Comments
I hope I remember to see this when it comes out in two damn months in my little Colorado college town.
“Can you really love someone if you don’t know them? And how can you know them at a single glance?”
Can you wildly overthink a saying?
Nope, it’s not just a saying. It’s very much a romantic premise: You fall in love with someone the minute you lay eyes on them.
Love at first sight happened to me. And the more I got to know the person in question, the harder I fell.
Wow, two sentences is overthinking to you? Good luck with life, bud.
This is by far your laziest attempt at trolling.
nice
The preview for this came before Parasite and it was definitely the most compelling of them all, I’m glad to see that it wasn’t all style over substance and I’m really looking forward to catching this one.
french language films with subtitles bum me out- i took french for years and was actually conversational by the end of highschool, but its been so long that i only pick up bits and pieces. the problem is that when i try and read the subtitles in english at the same time i’m picking up just enough recognizable french words and phrases in the actual recording that my brain just seizes up and i end up missing sections and having to re-watch (which kind of kills the narrative flow.) its a weird phenomenon.
i always tell myself i could probably get back to understanding it fairly quickly if i bought one of those apps (since i still have a lot of the vocabulary still bouncing around upstairs) but its hard to find the time.
You could just turn the subtitles off. A few hours of listening to French with the context visually clear will probably work too.
true- there are plenty of tales of people learning english watching tv shows. i think something like a contemporary sitcom would work better though, because the things they’d be referring to would be more familiar to me (plus you could probably watch a ton of them back to back.)
also, as i alluded to, i think a big part of my issue is that while i was quite good at memorizing the vocabulary i never really got the hang of the conversational parts of the language (probably because we had a french teacher who was older and still believed heavily in memorizing stuff and the rest would fall into place.) its kind of like watching an english movie if all you knew was 100 common english nouns, maybe 10 verbs and then maybe a dozen super common phrases/greetings (hello, thank you, i would like) that you’d expect from a basic highschool class
Probably my favorite movie of this year’s. The fact that France didn’t make it its Oscar candidate is baffling.
Sexism is alive and well in France. Apparently, they thought it wasn’t sensual enough. Which is … confusing to me.
What the fuck.The film is positively dripping with sex and tension from like five minutes in, when Marianne smokes a pipe, naked next to a fireplace. Half the film is Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel breathing softly and devouring each other with their eyes.And it’s not a dig. It’s one of the sexiest, most steaming films I’ve ever seen and it achieves that while never shows any actual sex, only some post-coital lounging. Just how do you call this thing “not sensual enough”. Maybe the old French farts got intimidated because the film show’s a woman on her period without making it a big deal.
I think it’s the lack of male-gaze titillation. The sensuality isn’t directed primarily on being sensual to men.
I 100% agree. That anyone could call this film “not sensual enough” is a damning indictment of that person’s taste.I’m a gay man, and even I felt how deeply erotic this movie was. The leads had incredible chemistry.
I’m a straight male. I’m aware that fetishization of lesbianism is an issue (especially when it’s used as a Get Out of Representation Jail Free card*).Still, I have never seen a picture of a man and a woman looking at each other that gives off half the energy of that still after the third paragraph. I sometimes legitimately wonder why any woman would even bother with us.* Definitely not accusing this movie of doing that at all.
“The year’s sexiest love story”?So can I count on scissoring at some point?Hey, I’ve seen Blue Is The Warmest Color, I’m familiar with what sexy French films dealing with lesbian love should deliver.
Fantastic movie, and I have to say, I loved the maid (Sophie) subplot, because along the way I realized that the movie tells a story of not two but three remarkable women.The feeling of sisterhood and just overall silent understanding betweel all three women gave me so.many.feelings.
“Sciamma and her star, Haenel, were once an item”
Art imitates vie
Going into it, I was uncertain as to whether “on fire” modified “portrait” or “lady.” After it was over, I still didn’t have a conclusive answer.
I’ll have to check when/if this is coming to Australia, because this is my cup of cinematic tea right here.
Aww, no wide release for this movie this year? I didn’t want to finalize my top 10 until I had a chance to see this, given that all I’ve heard since the film festival circuit was positive… but the wide release is still 2 months away? I’d like to solicit some recommendations to fill the void so I can avoid the weaksauce that currently occupy my 9 & 10 slots… and I’ll be back in 9 weeks with my actual thoughts!
It is a very good movie (top 10 of 2019 so far easily) where everything mostly simmers underneath until we get release in a few marvelous musical scenes. Still think I liked “Girlhood” slightly better. There may be a bit too much simmering here.
worst title of the year, easily
Just watched this film. Absolutely beautiful! Gorgeous film making and exquisite performances from the lead actresses too. Almost every shot looks like it could be in the wall of a gallery. Interesting to compare to Blue is the Warmest Colour, which while there were things I liked a lot about it, in hindsight, the male gaze aspect, especially in the sex scenes – don’t think you can call them love scenes – compares unfavourably to this film. Here, there is so much romance and emotional intensity and none of the prurienceWonderful
I just watched this and it fucked me up. Completely worth it, but goddamn.