Queer desire and the art of looking in Portrait… | Little White Lies

Queer Cinema

Queer desire and the art of look­ing in Por­trait of a Lady on Fire

22 Feb 2020

Words by Rosie Thompson

Woman wearing a black scarf covering the lower half of her face, with blue-green eyes visible.
Woman wearing a black scarf covering the lower half of her face, with blue-green eyes visible.
Céline Sciamma’s 18th-cen­tu­ry romance beau­ti­ful­ly por­trays the hid­den­ness of same-sex relationships.

Set against the back­drop of 18th-cen­tu­ry Brit­tany, Céline Sciamma’s Por­trait of a Lady on Fire fol­lows Mar­i­anne (Noémie Mer­lant), a por­trait artist hired by an Ital­ian count­ess to paint a por­trait of her daugh­ter, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). The com­plet­ed por­trait is to be sent to Héloïse’s prospec­tive hus­band in advance of their arranged mar­riage, but as she has a his­to­ry of refus­ing to pose for her por­trait in protest, Mar­i­anne is asked to paint Héloïse in secret.

Pos­ing as some­one hired to accom­pa­ny Héloïse on her walks by the beach, Mar­i­anne begins to care­ful­ly watch and study her sub­ject: observ­ing the way her mouth moves; the cur­va­ture of her face; the way she folds her hands right over left; the posi­tion­ing of the folds in her dress. Heloise intends to cap­ture Mar­i­anne per­fect­ly, even ask­ing the house­maid Sophie to pose in her place, posi­tion­ing her body to mim­ic Héloïse’s from memory.

The film is remark­ably still, with min­i­mal dia­logue and music through­out; Sci­amma shapes her sto­ry around the way the char­ac­ters look at one anoth­er. Extend­ed glances, often direct­ly into the cam­era, and sub­tle ges­tures add to the pal­pa­ble feel­ing of desire that steadi­ly grows between Héloïse and Marianne.

As a queer woman nav­i­gat­ing a cishet soci­ety which can often feel unsafe, I felt nos­tal­gia for all those times when I have decod­ed eye con­tact from oth­er women and tried to sig­nal my own queer­ness in return. This is not always about roman­tic desire, but an over­whelm­ing urge to recog­nise ele­ments of your own oth­er­ness in others.

The hid­den­ness of looks becomes a secret code that only you and the oth­er per­son under­stand, and see­ing this inter­pret­ed so vivid­ly in Por­trait of a Lady on Fire made me feel that my own expe­ri­ences were, in some way, part of their story.

A woman in a red dress standing in an art studio, painting on an easel.

It also remind­ed me of Sciamma’s 2007 film Water Lilies, where Floriene’s (Adèle Haenel) feel­ings for Marie (Pauline Acquart) are expressed large­ly through the act of watch­ing her swim; study­ing her every stroke as a means to under­stand her. In Por­trait of a Lady on Fire, Mar­i­anne is wracked with guilt upon com­plet­ing her assign­ment, and so she decides to tell the truth about why she was hired and show Héloïse the paint­ing before it is revealed to her mother.

Héloïse cold­ly cri­tiques her por­trait, ask­ing if that is how Mar­i­anne real­ly sees her and stat­ing that there is no life”. Mar­i­anne reacts by destroy­ing the paint­ing, and with this comes a reas­sur­ing sense of relief — there are no more secrets between them, and they can now form a more authen­tic con­nec­tion. I didn’t know you were an art crit­ic,” Mar­i­anne tells Héloïse; I didn’t know you were a painter,” she replies.

In a piv­otal scene, Héloïse asks Mar­i­anne to take her place and look towards the easel, as if it was she who was being paint­ed. Look. If you look at me, who do I look at?” she says, sig­nalling that she is no longer just the sub­ject, but also the object. She lets Mar­i­anne know that she has been observ­ing her in return, and it is this exchange which gives these women the con­fi­dence to act on their mutu­al desire.

Por­trait of a Lady on Fire made me reflect on the unique and unchang­ing expe­ri­ence of being a queer woman – the impor­tance of decod­ing looks and of find­ing trust in a shared gaze. Sci­amma por­trays this so com­pelling­ly, and Mer­lant and Haenel’s elec­tri­fy­ing chem­istry allowed me to observe the char­ac­ters the way that they observe each oth­er. The film left me long­ing to run on a beach; swim in the cool sea; put paint to canvas.

Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the final scenes made me con­sid­er the pow­er of the mem­o­ry of love and desire. Instead of feel­ing com­plete­ly hope­less, the way that trag­ic end­ings of so many queer sto­ries do, I found com­fort in know­ing that Mar­i­anne and Héloïse would always think of each oth­er, no mat­ter their fate.

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