If one were to describe Portrait of a Lady on Fire in a very consciously poetic way then, however cheesy it may sound, it would be a cinematic painting rife with a palette full of emotions. There’s something overwhelmingly heartfelt about the love story between Heloise and Marianne, yet a certain artistic formalism and restraint which only multiplies its appeal.
Set in the 18th-century, on the island of Brittany in France, the film is about aristocrat Heloise (Adele Haenel) and painter Marianne (Noemie Merlant). The latter is commissioned by the Countess, to make Heloise's portrait on the sly, while pretending to be a companion during walks to the sea. Heloise is set to be married off to a nobleman in Milan.
The sexual frisson and tension between Heloise and Marianne is evident from the first frame itself. One unbending and haughty, the other limpid. It’s a slow and steady discovery of each other, a gradual peeling, layer by layer. Both enamoured by each other, mysteries and puzzles waiting to be solved, enigmas in need of being understood.
- Director: Celine Sciamma
- Starring: Noemie Merlant, Adele Haenel, Luana Bajrami, Valeria Golino
- Storyline: A same sex love story set in the 18th century France, between an aristocrat lady Heloise and Marianne who is commissioned to paint her portrait
- Run time: 120 minutes
Celine Sciamma’s world is one that is entirely populated by women as well as owned by them. So is the gaze an overtly feminine one. A woman painter looking at the object who also happens to be a woman and the object in turn looking back at her. “If you look at me, who do I look at?” Heloise asks Marianne rhetorically. And a web of intimacies and longing is spun between the observer and the observed in that one moment.
Add to that another layer; that both of them, in turn, are being looked at by a woman filmmaker from behind the camera. The film flows langorously within these womanly ways of seeing. Forbidden desires brim over and passions surge like the choppy seas or scalding flames but Sciamma frames them with her uniquely gentle and graceful eye. She renders something impeccable and measured yet profound to the feelings.
The protocols of love are gently negotiated. Away from the trap of marriage, is freedom in being alone. But then, as Heloise states, in a most disarming and honest expression of love: “In solitariness, I feel liberty but I also feel your absence.” There are many such moments of tenderness that are held in time, to pause and ponder on. Above it all, looms the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and the significance of the former turning around.
It’s a film about being caught between being brave and docile, between resisting and giving in. How far is it possible to go? There’s something oddly uplifting in the heartbreaking finale and the camera lingering on, on Haenel’s face forever and ever. A moment when the actor gives it her all to bring out the boundless pain of the forbidden and deep unfulfilled desires. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is drenched in romance, in the possibilities and impossibilities, the aches and pains and the pleasures and glory of glorious love.
Portrait of a Lady is currently streaming on MUBI
