By CYNTHIA BIDDLECOMB
Los Alamos
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”, is a two-hour long, French film that won writer/director Céline Sciamma Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.
Originally titled Portrait de la jeune fille en feu—in this story, la jeune fille is a young woman, untested by the real world.
If you choose to see this film, expect to patiently soak up long cinematic takes of wonder and beauty. This is a film is for those who don’t mind reading subtitles and who are open to seeing two women grow in attraction to each other. It is “Rated R for some nudity and sexuality”.
The first scene takes place in an art studio at the end of the 18th century, where a woman is teaching young girls to paint. Girls of a certain social class in that era were taught the arts in order to appear accomplished and worthy of marriage to a fine gentleman. There were very few young women whose gift for artistic endeavor would have given them the economic viability necessary to be able to avoid being married off to the highest bidder. But such is our heroine.
Marianne, played by Noémie Merlant, is the daughter of a successful portrait artist. She will one day partner with her father in his business and have a choice about whether or not to marry. We learn this in the extended flashback that makes up the majority of the film. She is taken back in her memory to a time when she was hired to paint a portrait at a house on an island off the Brittany coast.
The subject of the portrait was a young woman who, after the death of her sister, was brought home from her convent to marry a Milanese gentleman. Her portrait has been requested by the prospective husband in this marriage, arranged by her mother, a countess.
Marianne, the painter, arrives by boat, weighed down with her painting supplies, some canvasses and a few clothes. Awaiting her is the Countess (Valeria Golino), whose portrait hangs over a fireplace; it is a portrait that Marianne’s father had painted when the Countess was young and about to be married herself. The Countess informs Marianne that her daughter, Héloïse (played by Adèle Haenel) had refused to sit for an earlier portrait artist. So, Marianne is to pretend to have been hired to keep Héloïse company on long walks out of doors. The portrait will have to be painted from memory. Sophie the maid (played by Luàna Bajrami) is the only other person in the house, besides the Countess and Héloïse, but she is in on the ruse to get the portrait done.
What unfolds in this story, in slow, deliberate scenes of stunning beauty and emotion, are relationships that transcend those expected among social classes. The daughter of a countess, a woman in a trade (portrait painting), and a maid who serves them both, bond in different ways, each overcoming for a time their lot in life.
Rather than emphasizing the class differences among them, the film presents them as equally intriguing. Marianne, the independent painter, represents the liberty they each crave. Héloïse, is naïve but bold, ravenous to learn how Marianne sees life. In committing Héloïse’s features to memory, Marianne absorbs Héloïse, each becoming entranced with the another. Passion ensues, on a very slow but steady trajectory.
The cinematography in this film is fantastic … the palette of colors, the lighting, the textures, the sensuality, and the sparse but poignant use of music … all of it is exquisite. In addition to this sensual feast is an equally vibrant emotional feast—long, slow takes focusing on a face as it transitions from feelings of wonder, to those of deep love, and great loss. A triumph on film!
