Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu

French writer/director Céline Sciamma (Water Lilies,  Tomboy, Girlhood) is known for her minimalist pictures about young women exploring nonconformist notions of gender and sexuality.  Despite the confines of the society they exist in, the characters in her films discover their own power, often in private spaces where they are unobserved by the opposite sex. These excellent films have made Sciamma one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary French cinema, but none of her previous work could prepare viewers for the power and near-perfection of her astonishing fourth feature.  Portrait of a Lady on Fire brings together all of this filmmaker’s signature stylistic and thematic passions to create a rare work of sensual, art-house, costume drama—one that transcends all the clichés and expectations that come with that sub-genre. It is a work of exquisite formalist beauty and bountiful subtext told from, and about, an unforgivably under-represented perspective in cinema and indeed, in all forms of art.

Set in the late 18th century on an isolated island in Brittany, the film stars Noémie Merlant (Heaven Will Wait) as Marianne, a professional portraitist commissioned to paint a young noblewoman named Héloïse. But Héloïse, played by Adèle Haenel (Suzanne, BPM [Beats per Minute], and Sciamma’s Water Lilies), has no intention of having her image committed to canvas because the finished painting will be sent to entice and secure the hand of her future husband, a wealthy Milanese nobleman. Héloïse’s mother, the Countess (Valeria Golino), removed the girl from a convent and arranged the marriage after the unexpected death of Héloïse’s older sister, who perhaps committed suicide to avoid the betrothal. Since Héloïse refuses to sit for an artist, the Countess insists that Marianne present herself to the young woman as a paid companion in order to observe her discreetly, painting the portrait in secret without benefit of an actual model.

What follows is an intricate and thrilling love story, at once unsentimental in its realistic assessment of these women’s limited choices and restrictive circumstances, while at the same time almost utopian in its celebration of the freedoms that become available to them after they learn to trust each other. Like the Island itself, the large, seaside house, at first seems deserted, but the characters are not entirely alone. A young servant named Sophie (Luana Bajrami) lives with them, and through her, we discover the other inhabitants of the island society. Sophie’s presence, and the fascinating ways the three women relate and interact once the Countess is gone, enables Sciamma to explore the dynamics and restrictions of class, gender, and sexuality during this specific period, as well as how the patriarchy confines women of all eras, including our own.

Now that female filmmakers are finally starting to get the attention they deserve (though still not the budgets nor frequency of jobs), there has been much scholarly and informal discourse about “the female gaze” in cinema.  Audiences and critics are beginning to see how our understanding and experience of history, art, and culture comes through the distinctly male perspective of the vast majority of the people who produce what we consume. This gendered lens is particularly true in the case of cinema—the most populist art form—where the percentage of women directors has recently risen to just slightly over ten percent, after lingering well under two percent for the previous century. The effort to correct this disparity is finally taking hold, but too often when filmmakers take on this issue, the resulting pictures come across as reactions to prior movies rather than as works that stand on their own. Their subtexts overtake their narratives. Such is not the case here. 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire may harken back to a number of classic films, but it never feels like an overt commentary on any of them. The patient, psychological exploration of two women from different classes, alone on an island and slowly coming to understand each other, cannot help but bring to mind Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Persona (1966). The period setting, beach and sea imagery, and pronounced feminist frame of seduction and sexuality evokes Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning The Piano (1993). But where Bergman’s film deliberately opens itself up to myriad interpretations, Sciamma’s thematic intentions are woven together with remarkable intention and clarity. And where Campion is willing to sacrifice logic and narrative credibility on the altar of visual metaphor, Sciamma constructs a captivating “brief encounter” love story solid enough to support the rich multitude of subtextual layers she weaves throughout the story’s framework 

The simple yet inspired construct of the two main characters—Marianne, an emancipated and talented artist whose work is only appreciated by the masses when she submits under her father’s name, and Héloïse, a sheltered but spirited woman who longs for a creative outlet—enables this unquestionably feminist art film to make all its keen observations and sharp political points without ever feeling didactic, dogmatic, or pretentious. Sciamma explores the female gaze with effortless depth by crafting a story about characters who must spend a great deal of time gazing at each other.

Marianne studies Héloïse because she must secretly paint her, and she wants to capture her essence. Héloïse studies Marianne because she hopes to understand this worldlier, more independent woman, and also wants to be understood and seen (but never captured) by her. They begin this mutual gazing out of necessity and guarded curiosity, but soon these become gazes of desire—for each other and to create. While their relationship begins with mystery and deception, it transforms into a partnership of equals. They are not painter and subject, nor artist and muse; they become co-conspirators in the act of creation. When left alone in the house with Sophie, they’re inspired to craft a painting based on a recent experience, which crystallizes the film’s themes with devastating power yet without a shred of heavy-handed sermonizing. Each provocative and fascinating idea in this picture emerges from the characters’ dynamics as organically as flower petals opening after spending enough time in the warm sun.

We watch Marianne construct the portrait by building up layers of brush strokes, yet we are unconscious of how Sciamma is constructing her picture by building up layers of subtext. The film’s well-founded ideas are all hidden in plain sight throughout this cinematic canvas. At nearly every turn the movie manages to comment on both present-day issues and the history of women’s roles in art and society, without ever breaking or distracting from the romantically charged, period reality it creates. By the end of Portrait of a Lady on Fire we are left not only reflecting on Marianne, Héloïse, and Sophie, but also wondering about all the female artists whose work we will never know because what they depicted wasn’t valued, or because they themselves were overshadowed by their male contemporaries.

César Award-winning cinematographer Claire Mathon’s camerawork is as precise and striking, yet as unabashedly unadorned as Marianne’s paintings. Each still, exquisitely framed composition draws our eyes to the exact place that she and Sciamma want us to direct our gaze. We take in the spare but undeniable beauty of the settings and of Dorothée Guiraud’s colorful yet unflashy costumes. But what is going on behind the faces of the actors is what enthrals. Editor Julien Lacheray lets each image invisibly flow from one to the next. He quickens the observational pace only at a few key moments to emphasize the fleeting nature of the relationship at the heart of this picture, then slows down again to illustrate how the lingering memories of a transformational brief encounter stay with us forever.

In terms of referencing existing artworks to frame and comment on her own, Sciamma’s masterstrokes come via her use of the ancient Greek myth of “Orpheus and Eurydice,” which the three main characters read aloud to each other in another pointed scene. And her use of a dramatic movement of the “Summer” section from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” represents the depths of emotion, memory, longing, regret, and satisfaction that a work of art can awaken in us all. It is in these sequences where the film could so easily slip into didactic pretensions—the Orpheus tale centering so heavily on the power of a gaze, and “The Four Seasons” music requiring a fair amount of exposition to be carefully set up.  But in Sciamma’s hands, these allusions are what make Portrait of a Lady on Fire the rare brief-encounter picture that grabs the viewer by the heart and the head with equal power. She crafts a movie of cogent ideas contained within an intensely sensual film experience. We willingly give ourselves over to this great artist the way Héloïse eventually yields to Marianne—not because she manipulates us into submission, but because she knows how to make us her collaborators in the act of storytelling and story-receiving.