PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
****
Director: Céline Sciamma
Screenwriter: Céline Sciamma
Principal cast:
Noémie Merlant
Adèle Haenel
Luàna Bajrami
Valeria Golino
Christel Baras
Armande Boulanger
Country: France
Classification: M
Runtime: 121 mins.
Australian release date: 26 December 2019
Previewed at: Sony Pictures Theatrette, Sydney, on 5 December 2019.
In this predominately female film, Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, director Céline Sciamma has created a period romance that unveils a very close and personal drama of love and despair between a female artist and her subject, a woman betrothed to a man she has never met. Considered by many critics to be one of the best films of the year, it comes with cred, having been awarded the winner of Best Screenplay and Queer Palm awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It covers territory that Sciamma is intimately familiar with - she was in a relationship with Adèle Haenel, one of the movie’s lead actresses, for 11 years, although they parted ways before beginning to work on the film.
Set in the 18th century, a period where there were many female painters in Europe, we travel with Marianne (Noémie Merlant) on a small boat to a rocky island off the coast of Brittany. En route her canvas goes overboard but Marianne doesn’t hesitate to dive into the choppy waters to retrieve it. This action tells us a lot about her character; she’s a bit butch and ascetic, prepared to suffer for her art. She has been commissioned by a Countess (Valeria Golino) to paint a portrait of the Countess’s daughter, Héloïse (Haenel), to send to the young woman’s fiancé in Milan. We discover that Marianne is to pretend to be merely a ‘companion’ to Héloïse because she has resisted previous attempts to capture her image. The reason for the subterfuge is that Héloïse has been betrothed against her will and she’s not happy about it. Feeling observed while she and Marianne take their daily walk along the sea shore, she realises that she is being set-up but capitulates and sits for the portrait because she has fallen for Marianne and the feeling is mutual. The two women become engaged in an emotional and loving relationship, despite knowing, or perhaps because of it, that there is no future for them. As Héloïse succinctly puts it, “Equality is a pleasant feeling.”
Framed in a very painterly fashion, the scenes are beautifully lit. The film also contains meticulous and unusual historical details that have been well-researched; for example, the women drink a lot of wine because it was deemed safer than water in those times, and their gowns have pockets (which were subsequently prohibited at the end of the century). There is also a very significant scene where the two women go for a night foray into the country and join a group of local women singing Breton folk songs - one of only two occasions music is used in the film. The gathering displays the tradition of the little-known existence of ‘women’s business,’ a phenomenon not well recorded for posterity. The director complains that, while researching the film, she learnt that little is known about women’s intimate behaviour during this period mainly because history is written by men and “they don’t give a shit.”
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is a paean to women and their love of the arts and the influence it has in their lives. Sciamma has said that, “Even though these women knew their lives were marked out in advance, they experienced something else. They were curious, intelligent and wanted to love. Their desires may be part of a world that forbids such things, but they exist all the same. Their bodies become their own when they are allowed to relax, when vigilance wanes, when there is no longer the gaze of protocol, when they are alone.” In a recent interview in The Sydney Morning Herald, she also explained that she “… wanted the movie to be heartbreaking but consoling. Because it is cinema - and cinema, like books and music, is a refuge and consolation. I wanted this to be both”. In this, she has succeeded.
Screenwriter: Céline Sciamma
Principal cast:
Noémie Merlant
Adèle Haenel
Luàna Bajrami
Valeria Golino
Christel Baras
Armande Boulanger
Country: France
Classification: M
Runtime: 121 mins.
Australian release date: 26 December 2019
Previewed at: Sony Pictures Theatrette, Sydney, on 5 December 2019.
In this predominately female film, Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, director Céline Sciamma has created a period romance that unveils a very close and personal drama of love and despair between a female artist and her subject, a woman betrothed to a man she has never met. Considered by many critics to be one of the best films of the year, it comes with cred, having been awarded the winner of Best Screenplay and Queer Palm awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It covers territory that Sciamma is intimately familiar with - she was in a relationship with Adèle Haenel, one of the movie’s lead actresses, for 11 years, although they parted ways before beginning to work on the film.
Set in the 18th century, a period where there were many female painters in Europe, we travel with Marianne (Noémie Merlant) on a small boat to a rocky island off the coast of Brittany. En route her canvas goes overboard but Marianne doesn’t hesitate to dive into the choppy waters to retrieve it. This action tells us a lot about her character; she’s a bit butch and ascetic, prepared to suffer for her art. She has been commissioned by a Countess (Valeria Golino) to paint a portrait of the Countess’s daughter, Héloïse (Haenel), to send to the young woman’s fiancé in Milan. We discover that Marianne is to pretend to be merely a ‘companion’ to Héloïse because she has resisted previous attempts to capture her image. The reason for the subterfuge is that Héloïse has been betrothed against her will and she’s not happy about it. Feeling observed while she and Marianne take their daily walk along the sea shore, she realises that she is being set-up but capitulates and sits for the portrait because she has fallen for Marianne and the feeling is mutual. The two women become engaged in an emotional and loving relationship, despite knowing, or perhaps because of it, that there is no future for them. As Héloïse succinctly puts it, “Equality is a pleasant feeling.”
Framed in a very painterly fashion, the scenes are beautifully lit. The film also contains meticulous and unusual historical details that have been well-researched; for example, the women drink a lot of wine because it was deemed safer than water in those times, and their gowns have pockets (which were subsequently prohibited at the end of the century). There is also a very significant scene where the two women go for a night foray into the country and join a group of local women singing Breton folk songs - one of only two occasions music is used in the film. The gathering displays the tradition of the little-known existence of ‘women’s business,’ a phenomenon not well recorded for posterity. The director complains that, while researching the film, she learnt that little is known about women’s intimate behaviour during this period mainly because history is written by men and “they don’t give a shit.”
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is a paean to women and their love of the arts and the influence it has in their lives. Sciamma has said that, “Even though these women knew their lives were marked out in advance, they experienced something else. They were curious, intelligent and wanted to love. Their desires may be part of a world that forbids such things, but they exist all the same. Their bodies become their own when they are allowed to relax, when vigilance wanes, when there is no longer the gaze of protocol, when they are alone.” In a recent interview in The Sydney Morning Herald, she also explained that she “… wanted the movie to be heartbreaking but consoling. Because it is cinema - and cinema, like books and music, is a refuge and consolation. I wanted this to be both”. In this, she has succeeded.