Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant on Portrait of a… | Little White Lies

Interviews

Adèle Haenel and Noémie Mer­lant on Por­trait of a Lady on Fire

14 Feb 2020

Words by Elena Lazic

Two stylised portraits of individuals with closed eyes, in muted blues and yellows.
Two stylised portraits of individuals with closed eyes, in muted blues and yellows.
The co-stars of Céline Sciamma’s sump­tu­ous peri­od romance dis­cuss the inti­mate – and polit­i­cal – nature of the film.

Twelve years after their first col­lab­o­ra­tion Water Lilies put them both on the map, Céline Sci­amma and Adèle Haenel com­bine their tal­ents again in Por­trait of a Lady on Fire. The lat­ter plays Héloïse, a woman sti­fled and immo­bilised by the demands of 18th cen­tu­ry soci­ety, and by the objec­ti­fy­ing gaze of Mar­i­anne (Noémie Mer­lant), the artist hired to paint her portrait.

But it isn’t long before Héloïse dis­rupts this unfair bal­ance: togeth­er with the two actress­es, Sci­amma crafts a queer romance between artist and muse’ that defi­ant­ly resists the mor­bid, roman­tic’ dynam­ic of dom­i­nance and sub­servience. Here Haenel and Mer­lant reveal how they approached their respec­tive characters.

LWLies: Your char­ac­ters are placed on an equal foot­ing in the film and in their romance, but they are also quite dif­fer­ent from each oth­er. How did you approach them?

Adèle Haenel: I didn’t take into account that dif­fer­ence, actu­al­ly. Because I think that the dif­fer­ence is born of the fact that we are dif­fer­ent. I just took posi­tion accord­ing to my ideas, and I told myself that since they were my ideas, they wouldn’t be Noémie’s.

Noémie Mer­lant: I told myself that I would look at Héloïse ini­tial­ly in the most neu­tral way pos­si­ble, because that’s in the sto­ry. I imag­ine that when Mar­i­anne paints, she tries to main­tain a neu­tral approach, to look through the per­son and draw them. I didn’t take into account this con­trast of where the char­ac­ters come from.

AH: We both inde­pen­dent­ly worked on our char­ac­ters. I worked on pos­ture most of all. In my pre­vi­ous roles, I’ve tend­ed to be very mobile, mak­ing quick move­ments. When I start­ed to work on this film, my thing was that I had a cape, so I thought I would move like a sort of Japan­ese princess. That was the ini­tial idea in my head. So I worked at cre­at­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent from my image from before. In real­i­ty, I don’t care, it’s not a ques­tion of image. But it was about rein­vent­ing myself. Cre­at­ing an image root­ed in still­ness, in that hier­at­ic side of things. It was about speak­ing more haugh­ti­ly, mov­ing less, artic­u­lat­ing ideas a lit­tle better.

NM: It was about quite con­crete, phys­i­cal things.

AH: Noémie had this thing where she would put her hands in her pock­ets, which would give her a very mod­ern sil­hou­ette. Less corseted.

NM: And the pipe… And then there’s all the work of find­ing the gaze of the painter. There was prepa­ra­tion there. And then we let our­selves be guid­ed by obser­va­tion and by the inti­ma­cy that grad­u­al­ly appeared between us.

Héloïse spends a lot of the film being a sub­ject of our gaze and of Marianne’s gaze. How did you deal with play­ing a char­ac­ter that we can’t access for quite a long time?

AH: That was inten­tion­al. It was a lot of fun for me. I do every­thing very seri­ous­ly and I believe in what I do very deeply. I love art, I love cin­e­ma more than any­thing else. But I always work in a play­ful way, so I feel like I’m mak­ing jokes or pranks. So I told myself I would make a char­ac­ter who wouldn’t be a psy­cho­log­i­cal uni­ty, the way char­ac­ters usu­al­ly are – where they come from often lead­ing to Freudi­an stuff, like, I was trau­ma­tised my mum and dad and that’s why I am the way I am.’ It’s not that that’s not inter­est­ing, but it’s a bit annoy­ing after a while. So I thought I’d make a char­ac­ter who didn’t have an inter­nal prin­ci­ple, except for the joy of shoot­ing the scenes, except for the emo­tions born from act­ing. No inter­nal log­ic. It’s a char­ac­ter who is dis­tort­ed by being looked at.

There is also some­thing very phys­i­cal about the film. It’s a cos­tume dra­ma, but usu­al­ly in this kind of film we don’t see bod­ies that move. How did you bring this dimen­sion into the film?

NM: As soon as we wear those heavy cos­tumes and the corset, we auto­mat­i­cal­ly have a dif­fer­ent demeanour. The whole weight that was put on women at the time comes auto­mat­i­cal­ly with those cos­tumes. The char­ac­ters, gen­er­al­ly, are rather reserved in the first part of the film, and lit­tle by lit­tle, we’re going to break that and enter their inti­ma­cy. We’re going to see them laugh, joke, have con­ver­sa­tions, dis­cuss wom­an­hood and art. Lit­tle by lit­tle, there is a truth that comes out of all this accu­mu­lat­ed restraint. I think that came rather nat­u­ral­ly because Céline was real­ly try­ing to lead us to a most sin­cere and truth­ful place. It was the same for the bod­ies. Lit­tle by lit­tle, the cos­tumes are removed or for­got­ten, we show some­thing else with our bod­ies because the char­ac­ters final­ly let them­selves go.

AH: We decon­struct­ed the corset­ed image and the pret­ti­ness that we inher­it­ed from that peri­od, that image where the cos­tumes only sig­ni­fy pret­ti­ness, as you can see in most cos­tume dra­mas. We trans­formed the cos­tume into some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. It’s com­posed of many things. It is beau­ti­ful, indeed, but it is also heavy, and it hin­ders move­ment. We want­ed to show that dynam­ic. The clas­si­cal cos­tume dra­ma will just show this ide­alised image, remov­ing the social vio­lence behind the cos­tumes, remov­ing what it means on the body – it’s just pret­ty. But in real­i­ty, that’s not how it is. Walk­ing in the sand wear­ing that, hon­est­ly, it was a night­mare! We were on the sand wear­ing those dress­es and heels, it was insane. It was our job to show that, to show the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of those costumes.

One of the themes of the film is the rela­tion­ship between the artist and the mod­el, reject­ing the idea of the muse’ and fur­ther­ing that of col­lab­o­ra­tion and equal­i­ty. How is this idea reflect­ed in your work with Céline?

NM: When I met Adèle and Céline, at the cast­ing, I was won­der­ing what my place would be because they knew each oth­er so well. But in real­i­ty, once with them, I nev­er once again asked myself that, because they were in that shar­ing, a hor­i­zon­tal gaze. We’re all there to try to cre­ate some­thing, to try to make a great film, to try to make art, to be our­selves – and that goes through lis­ten­ing, through trust, through car­ing, and most of all through gen­tle­ness. I vivid­ly remem­ber, the first time Céline gave me act­ing direc­tions, it was the soft­ness of her voice, and the soft­ness she set up in the crew. It’s a bit like in the film, an equal­i­ty. We’re all here to make some­thing in joy and not in pain, and to lis­ten to each oth­er. That’s how we can make some­thing good. We are collaborators.

AH: Noémie’s arrival in our duo was essen­tial. It wasn’t on the side, it entered at the heart of it and it changed the alche­my of things. Then, Céline and I have a col­lab­o­ra­tion that start­ed twelve years ago, and it runs through every­thing: we made Water Lilies togeth­er, and then all the films we each made in our respec­tive careers, we accom­pa­nied them. Each one of Céline’s films, I’ve accom­pa­nied them in their path; and all the film’s I’ve made, all the choic­es I’ve made, they’re also linked to my col­lab­o­ra­tion with Céline. So of course there’s a par­al­lel to be made between our col­lab­o­ra­tion, and the artist-mod­el rela­tion­ship in the film.

There is this idea in the film of reclaim­ing the female artists who have been for­got­ten by his­to­ry. What’s your take on this?

AH: I think it’s dif­fi­cult to con­sti­tute one­self as a female artist because our sto­ry has been tak­en away from us. So we don’t have a ref­er­ence. So of course, it’s hard to project your­self in a world where you feel pushed aside. At the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, in real­i­ty, there are only men. There comes a point where it’s nor­mal that it affects the brain, and that it affects ambi­tions, self-esteem. So, of course, it’s in the film. But it’s not in rela­tion to men, that’s what I mean. The film is absolute­ly female. Just like most films are absolute­ly male.

But we’re not in that per­spec­tive. We have a his­to­ry that’s been tak­en away from us, and then we’re told, Well, why can’t you do it?’ We’re already being beat­en up in the present, and on top of that, we’re told, It’s not hard!’ Well, I don’t think so. So yes, it’s impor­tant, but the film shouldn’t be put in a mil­i­tant thing, because that’s under­min­ing it. It’s a sen­su­al film, it’s a film of cin­e­ma, it’s a film of fan­ta­sy, etc, but of course it’s polit­i­cal. We can’t help being political.

Por­trait of a Lady on Fire is released 28 Feb­ru­ary. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.

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