Por­trait of a Lady on Fire – first look review

A woman leaps from a small wood­en boat into chop­py waters. She’s ful­ly clothed in a heavy red gown, which makes it a strug­gle to swim to the unin­ten­tion­al­ly jet­ti­soned crate she’s des­per­ate­ly try­ing to retrieve. But she’s deter­mined – not because its con­tents hold any par­tic­u­lar mon­e­tary val­ue but for rea­sons that, at this stage, can only be explained on a sub­con­scious lev­el. Inside the box sits the blank can­vas onto which she will soon paint a por­trait of the woman she loves.

The his­to­ry of art has been dom­i­nat­ed by the male gaze, estab­lish­ing con­trast­ing par­a­digms of the strong, stat­uesque man and the pas­sive, flaw­less woman that endure to this day in the films and tele­vi­sion shows we watch and the adverts we are shown. Debate has raged for years in the art world over how to con­tex­tu­alise cen­turies of male con­struc­tion and fetishi­sa­tion of female bod­ies, but post #MeToo it feels apt to now ask a dif­fer­ent ques­tion: what does it look like when a woman is depict­ed by a female artist?

This is the crux of Girl­hood writer/​director Céline Sciamma’s exquis­ite fourth fea­ture, Por­trait of a Lady on Fire, which is told from the per­spec­tive of a female artist who forms a deep, immutable bond with her sub­ject. The set­ting is 18^th cen­tu­ry France, specif­i­cal­ly a remote island in Brit­tany. It’s here that Mar­i­anne (Noémie Mer­lant) meets Héloïse (Adèle Haenel, reunit­ed with Sci­amma fol­low­ing her break­out role in the director’s 2007 debut fea­ture, Water Lilies). The for­mer is a well-regard­ed painter who has been com­mis­sioned to do a por­trait of Héloïse which will be used to attract a male suitor.

But there’s a slight catch. Héloïse’s wealthy, wid­owed moth­er (Vale­ria Goli­no) reveals that her daugh­ter will not sit for any painter, so Mar­i­anne must instead observe her under the pre­tence of chap­er­on­ing her on walks to a near­by beach. Héloïse has not long returned home from a con­vent, yet we sense she feels no hap­pi­er or less con­strained here. After a slow­burn first act, where ele­gant­ly com­posed shots of stolen glances and loaded exchanges charge the air with pal­pa­ble fris­son, one of Héloïse and Marianne’s reg­u­lar out­ings pro­vides the spark that ignites their romance.

One evening, they attend a local fes­ti­val with oth­er noble­women from the region. As the sun sets sev­er­al of the women join togeth­er to per­form a seem­ing­ly impromp­tu choral chant that cap­ti­vates Mar­i­anne. The syn­co­pat­ed claps and har­monised vocals become more and more intri­cate­ly lay­ered, when sud­den­ly our atten­tion is drawn to Héloïse, who appears like a mys­te­ri­ous vision through the bright, entranc­ing flick­er of a bonfire.

As Mar­i­anne and Héloïse begin to act on their impuls­es, Sci­amma adds fur­ther flash­es of mag­i­cal real­ism. At sev­er­al points dur­ing the film Héloïse appears before Mar­i­anne dressed all in white, illu­mi­nat­ed by a soft, celes­tial glow. How is Mar­i­anne – and the audi­ence – sup­posed to inter­pret these strange, ghost­ly sight­ings; as fleet­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions of her long­ing, as fore­bod­ing pre­mo­ni­tions, or some­thing else?

The answer lies in the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eury­dice, whose tale of doomed pas­sion is recount­ed by Héloïse to Mar­i­anne and timid house­maid Sophie (Luà­na Bajra­mi). The leg­end goes that Orpheus con­vinces Hades to free his dead wife, Eury­dice, from his grasp on the con­di­tion that Orpheus must not watch her being released. But he can’t resist turn­ing around, cast­ing her back into the under­world for­ev­er. Each woman pro­ceeds to offer a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion for Orpheus’ actions, with Héloïse sug­gest­ing that the mem­o­ry of a loved one can be more mean­ing­ful and pure than the reality.

Sciamma’s rav­ish­ing cel­e­bra­tion of female pas­sion and desire is root­ed in mutu­al sex­u­al awak­en­ing but ulti­mate­ly becomes a sto­ry of a much deep­er, more spir­i­tu­al kind of love. In the wrong hands this could eas­i­ly have been reduced to drawn-out scenes of cheap, soft-focus tit­il­la­tion (cf Abdel­latif Kechiche), but Sciamma’s sharp, pro­gres­sive screen­play – which remains tonal­ly faith­ful to the peri­od – is all the more affect­ing for what it doesn’t show us; what is left unsaid.

It’s a film that requires the view­er to read between the lines and study each metic­u­lous brush­stroke care­ful­ly. Yet it ends on a rather more unam­bigu­ous note. Hav­ing com­plet­ed her assign­ment, thus help­ing to seal her lover’s fate, Mar­i­anne returns to the main­land to teach an art class for young women. She sees Héloïse only twice more: once in abstract and once in the flesh, Sci­amma bridg­ing the phys­i­cal dis­tance between them while under­scor­ing their emo­tion­al con­nec­tion in shat­ter­ing, unbro­ken close-up – a suck­er-punch of a scene to rival Call Me by Your Name​’s dev­as­tat­ing final shot.