This past week, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire premiered on streaming platform Hulu. This has been on my to-watch list since last autumn and now that I have watched it, I can say without reservation that it has some of the most superb acting I have ever seen.
From Hulu: “In 18th century France a young painter, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), is commissioned to do the wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Day by day, the two women become closer as they share Héloïse’s last moments of freedom before the impending wedding.” None of this is inaccurate, but it comes nowhere near to what the movie is actually about.
Marianne, a painter whose father is also an acclaimed painter, is brought in by Héloïse’s mother to paint her portrait. This is after Héloïse’s has already broken another painter by refusing to so much as show her face. Marianne is to paint her portrait without admitting she is doing so, or asking Héloïse to pose. As she acts as a companion, the two do become close.
When it becomes untenable for Marianne to continue to lie, she admits the truth and Héloïse begins to pose. And, as they both watch each other intently, they fall in love. The acting is the plot. A dark look from Héloïse that causes Marianne (and me) to flinch away, was the climax of that scene. Héloïse making the point that she is watching Marianne as intently as she is being watched was as intense as any seduction.
I hadn’t realized how traumatized I had been by Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie Adele), until Héloïse and Marianne kissed the first time. I cringed away from looking at the screen, fearing that this would become the same kind of invasive camerawork. Instead, this movie ultimately backed away. There is nudity, and some sex, but with very few exceptions, Héloïse and Marianne are left to themselves without us voyeuring at them when they make love. We do spend time watching them be intimate, but not time watching them have sex. A more understanding and sympathetic gaze, rather than the intrusive one of Blue or, as Drew Gregory wrote on Auostraddle, a lesbian gaze.
When Héloïse’s mother leaves, Marianne, Héloïse and their maid Sophie – who is a fantastic character – spend a week together in a world in which the rules simply do not apply to them. If you watch this movie, I hope you enjoy these scenes as much as I did. Ultimately the idyll has to end, of course. The epilogue is terse, tense and the final scene so sublimely acted I don’t have any words for it. Adèle Haenel deserves praise for that, if nothing else.
On IMDB, a reviewer notes that the entire movie is ASMR, and I had noticed that it was very calming and serene to listen to. But what really struck me most was that the movie was itself much like a painting, shifting over time, being built up of small things, and little touches like brushtrokes.
Ratings:
Cinematography – 8
Characters – 10
Story – 8
Lesbian – 10, but not LGBTQ in any way
Service – 4 Nudity, Sexual situations
Overall – 10
It was an exceptional movie. I certainly would recommend it to anyone who wished for a beautiful, finely-drawn historical lesbian romance.
Watched this myself recently and I was also impressed. I had heard a lot of praise but with the period setting and focus on the romance I was still half expecting something more pulpy like a “Lost and Delirious” type movie. What elevated this film above those movies for me was how stunningly the camerawork replicated the “painter’s eye.” So many shots were composed and lit to have the look of a painting, or to force us to view the element in question – a background, a plant, a body part, a fold of cloth – the way a painter would.
Two other things really stood out for me. First was the attention to what I’ll call the “secret lives” of women. This was kind of the funhouse version of the manga we read where no men appear. We only see men at the start and beginning and their departure/reappearance is jarring. In the middle we see all the conversations, the bits of activity, the feasting and singing and responsibility of various women. We see the matter-of-fact way that Sophie’s problem is discussed and attempted to be solved, using methods surely handed down from woman to woman over the generations outside of men’s judgment and influence. This is why I thought Heloise wanted Marianne to paint her and Sophie the way she did. Marianne was lamenting that she was being prevented from creating “great art” by being forbidden from painting the male form. I think Heloise was saying there is great art to be found in the everyday lives of women too.
Second was the way it inspired me to think about relationships. Given the period, I knew that barring some grand historical fantasy this wasn’t going to be a story with a “happy” ending the way we think of it. But I realized that for the time, this was probably one of the better hands to be dealt. Two weeks of unfettered, truly deep physical and emotional connection with someone like you, outside the bounds of your society. Would you take two weeks of deep love over a whole lifetime and call it a success? When many even heterosexual people may not have had that option? Clearly the memory of those weeks sustained both of them in profound ways, as evidenced by the powerful scene you talked about. Just reminded me that people have always had to take and cherish love where they could find it, and that the marker of a successful relationship is not “met in school, married as virgins, stayed together until we died.”
FWIW I read that the director and Adele Haenel were once in a relationship together, so that may have something to do with the unusually sharp-yet-respectful gaze during the lovemaking.
Yes, yes, exactly all this.