Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is set on a remote, windswept Brittany island in the late 18th century. It’s about two women falling in love and it’s rapturous, scorching, ravishing and will lock your eyes to the screen. I’ve seen it three times and on each occasion my eyes were locked to the screen. At this point I could also say it’s a film that tells the male gaze to go take a running jump, then follow up with one of my lectures on post-structural feminism, as I know you are keen on all that, but ‘rapturous, scorching and ravishing’ will do for now. Plus it is deeply romantic. And wildly sexy. And, my God, so full of feeling. So let’s just go with all that.
Noémie Merlant stars as Marianne, an artist employed by a countess (Valeria Golino) to paint her daughter Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) on that windswept island. Héloïse is betrothed to a Milanese nobleman but before the marriage can proceed he must see a portrait because that’s how it worked before Tinder. However, there is a problem. Héloïse’s older sister was similarly betrothed but fell to her death from a cliff — or did she jump? — and Héloïse has thus far refused to be painted. So Marianne, who arrives in the guise of a walking companion, must observe her closely and then paint later in secret. Marianne looks. And looks and looks and looks. Until, finally, Héloïse looks back. It is all in the looking, and in looking at the looking we are taught to look too. I don’t, for instance, think I’ll ever be able to look at an ear again without taking note of its ‘warm and transparent hue’ and how it must ‘yield to the cheek’.
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