Review: Portrait Of A Lady On Fire
A few years ago, I took a foray into LGBT cinema to try and experience more about a culture that I know very little about, it’s something that I’ve tried to keep returning to as often as I can and the acclaim that Portrait Of A Lady On Fire received guaranteed I would be watching it soon. Having now done so I can say this definitely lives up to its hype, creating one of the most colourful and tender romances I’ve seen in a quite some time.
Set in the late 18th Century, the film follows Marianne, a French painter who is asked by a wealthy Countess to paint a portrait of her daughter Heloise who is due to be wed soon, however since Heloise refuses to be painted willingly, Marianne is to pose as a walking companion during the day to remember Heloise features then paint them from memory by night.
Marianne agrees but the longer she spends with Heloise, the more she learns about her troubled life and her anger over her forced marriage. Determined to capture a happier side of her subject, Marianne stays on for a week extra while The Countess is away, allowing her to get closer to Heloise while also giving Heloise freedom from her mother. It’s during that time where the two women bond over their different upbringings but find a shared intimacy from their closeness that slowly but surely blossoms into something more.
Plot isn’t the main focal point of the film but it’s not something to be ignored either, for starters this is a very slow burning film, even at only 2 hours the film does have a deliberate pace about it with most of what happens consisting of the painting sessions between Marianne and Heloise and their travels with handmaiden Sophie who has found herself pregnant and in need of an abortion. And yet that’s all the film needs, the slow pace allows each moment between the two leads to speak volumes even down to the small gesture as you can see their cautious romance slowly and carefully push itself to a point where neither of them can ignore it anymore while their time with Sophie presents them with a third, younger voice to add to their conversations whilst also breaking own the film’s themes of classism.
I can say that not a lot happens but honestly I’d be lying, it’s all subtlety, portrayed primarily through looks which is a consistent theme through the whole story, even going so far as to include the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice but adding a new romantic twist. With every gaze, every captured glance you can feel a very palpable connection between both women, it might not sound like much but on screen it speaks volumes and carries the film through to one of the most bittersweet endings since La La Land.
It’s actually had me looking back and wondering how much did I look at my ex just to look at her.
One thing to note about the cast is that it’s almost entirely women, there are men in the film but they’re left to little more than featured extras, which means the film hits harder when they interrupt the film with their arrival, although to go into more detail would be a spoiler.
Outside of Marianne and Heloise the two characters of note are Heloise’s mother The Countess and their handmaiden Sophie. Part of me wants to believe that The Countess remained unnamed throughout to dehumanise her a little bit, she’s not shown to be a cruel woman, in fact she’s willing to joke and laugh with Marianne at times, but she’s very much of the time period, wanting her daughter to be wed because that’s what’s expected of her and being a little too overprotective following the suicide of Heloise’s older sister. She’s away for a large portion of the film but her return is felt like a dagger through the heart of the love story.
Sophie meanwhile had a larger role than I was expecting, initially she was just in the background as the maid of the house but once The Countess was away she came into her own, partly through her admission of her pregnancy – and just like the lack of males in the rest of the film we never find out who the father is – but mostly from the complete absence of social levels against Marianne and Heloise. Despite her standing as a maid neither of them treat her as lesser and Sophie fits comfortably into their friendship, acting as a more outspoken if slightly naive voice that asks tougher questions than either of them are willing to speak just yet. Her pregnancy is an issue worth addressing and it leads to rather frank scene in the 18th Century doctors office, but it doesn’t define her character in the way it might do some other women.
The first half of the central pair is Heloise, played by Adele Haenel, and almost immediately we can tell that Heloise is not a happy woman, she’s been ripped from her sheltered life in the covenant to be forced into marriage after her older sister committed suicide, leaving her as the only future for the family, a future that she does not want nor is prepared for. Despite her hardships, Heloise never openly complains, she’s clearly not happy with the situation but it’s expected of her and she’s powerless to stop it, even as her love for Marianne grows and she discusses losing her sister and being put into a new life she wants nothing to do with she knows that she can’t turn back. There’s a very real case that Heloise is suffering from an undiagnosed depression, her sheltered life keeping her from knowing any better until Marianne arrives, bringing light and love and music with her, but it’s because of the time period that Heloise suffers even more from being unable to accept that love at first. Out of the two actresses I think Adele is the stronger performer, she carries so much with single looks and tiny expressions but the added weight of her underlying sadness is felt throughout and the troubled history of Heloise just adds to that, giving the film a melancholic vibe it relishes in.
By contrast Marianne – played by Noemie Merlant – is given very little history, despite being arguably the main character of the film she’s an anomaly in this time, she paints openly which in itself is not new but is more tolerated than accepted, she’s single with no plans to marry or even discussing the concept and she’s happy, happy in her freedom despite the isolation that comes with it. In truth there is something quite enigmatic about Marianne that makes her so interesting to watch, the casual way she flirts with Heloise, her easiness when talking to others, she fits right into any situation by picking up on their habits but it’s not until she meets Heloise that she has someone so easily call her out on her own habits, someone who in such a short period of time has broken down Marianne’s defences and seen a side that not even she knew about. Importantly it’s never said whether Marianne – or Heloise for that matter – is a lesbian, the words gay, straight, bi or anything similar is never mentioned because it’s not worth getting into, for Heloise we need her history to understand why she’s troubled by her future but for Marianne we never find out about any past girlfriends or boyfriends or anything, it gives us a blank slate, someone to judge only by their actions in the moment and Merlant’s charismatic turn makes Marianne so damn easy to like but the slow subtle breakdown of her character as she realises how impactful these few days with Heloise are to her.
Director Celine Sciamma paints this picture with a delicate hand, this is absolutely a romance movie and she plays it as such, almost everything about the film is soft, understated and it works completely in its favour. For the entirety of the first half Marianne and Heloise have very little contact with each other, a few touched here and there but their relationship is kept to artist and muse, but due to the secretive nature of Marianne’s work it’s easy to see how easily Heloise can mistake those longing glances for something more, and why Marianne’s focus can slowly evolve into affection as she notices little pieces that makes her admire Heloise all the more. It’s because of this that the small looks and glances mean so much more, because for the longest time that’s all these women have, a look that can convey want, longing, affection, lust, love and more and I felt it, I legitimately felt my heart skip a beat a couple times when their eyes caught.
It’s why the inclusion of the Orpheus and Eurydice story is so important and why their discussion of it matters to the rest of the film, in the myth Orpheus travels to the underworld to save his lover Eurydice, the Gods grant him the wish on the condition that should he look back at Eurydice before leaving the underworld she shall remain there, and naturally being a Greek tragedy, he looks. Aside from the obvious correlation regarding the theme of looking, both women take to the story differently, Marianne sees Orpheus’ decision as ‘The Poet’s Choice’, an unknown decision that is hard to make sense of but works for the narrative of the outsider, that tragedy is sometimes unavoidable where as Heloise sees it as ‘The Lovers Choice’, that Eurydice might have been the one in character to tell Orpheus to turn around because she knew that memory of her would be more powerful that her return to life. And that’s what these women have, in the back of their minds they know there’s a good chance that this relationship could turn into nothing more than a memory and they need to hold onto every little moment they can.
Sciamma also cleverly turns things around by not including certain elements, for starters there’s no obligatory sex scene, there’s nudity yes – including one interesting scene where Marianne sketches herself from a mirror resting between Heloise’s legs – but no sex which works to the film’s favour. To compare it to the other big French lesbian film, Blue Is The Warmest Colour – which I will defend even if the director is a skeezy perv – the sex in that is raw and unconventional because it’s a very real, very animalistic scene, here though the film’s intimacy is born from such tenderness that to include the sex would feel gratuitous and stand out horribly from the rest of the film, by not including a sex scene it allowed the smaller moments to have even more impact. More noticeably though is that Sciamma doesn’t include any music, the only sound in the film is the diegetic and natural noises of what surrounds the women at that time, sometimes it can be a gentle breeze as Marianne, Heloise and Sophie pick flowers in the comfortable solitude, other times it’s violent crashing waves as Marianne pours her heart out matching her crazed emotions to the environment. The through-line of not using any music is that when music is used it hits SO hard, the first time is an accapella ground during a bonfire scene which slowly builds an unknown tension before softly turning into an expression of joy, signalling a turning point in the relationship of both women. The second time is a bit of a spoiler as it comes right at the end but suffice to say, when Vivaldi’s Summer literally bursts onto the soundtrack and all the narrative and thematic weight that comes with it, it’s a sad but welcomed release that is powerful in how simplistic it is.
Part of me feels bad that even with the high rating I’m about to give this film that there’ll be people who won’t give it a chance, it’s a slow burning, foreign language, period piece and those three elements right there will turn a lot of people off. But I implore you all, see this film, give Portrait Of A Lady On Fire a chance because it turns that slow burn into a romance more tender, more intimate and more loving than anything else you’re likely to see. It’s simplistic story masks it’s themes of longing and bitter-sweetness, it’s small cast of characters allow the main duo of enigmatic Marianne and silently suffering Heloise to come to the forefront and gives their relationship time to blossom and director Sciamma crafts something so delicate but so passionate that every soft touch, every quiet moment and every loving look is felt through the screen. This is something special people, don’t let it pass you by.
9/10