Mark Reviews Movies: PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 5, 2019

Writer/director Céline Sciamma takes her time with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the results are mysterious, romantic, and quietly devastating. The key to the film's success is that it presents its romantic leads—two thoughtful women, trapped within the conventions of their time and class and social obligations—with such tenderness and understanding. They seem distant at first, but that's the point. Indeed, Sciamma keeps one of them off-screen for a long enough time that her appearance is the source of some suspense.

That's part of the mystery of the film, which communicates these characters and their relationship through their silent observations, their expanding conversations, and the presence of five paintings that feature the subject of the eponymous piece. That one, revealed during a brief prologue, is haunting. It depicts a woman, standing on a beach in a dark blue dress. The bottom hem of the dress, though, is ablaze.

We don't know why, and we don't even know if the woman realizes the potential peril. She is turned away from the viewer at a three-quarters profile, and her face is looking off, away from our eyes. If she even knows of the flame billowing around her feet, we don't know if she is reacting with fear or maybe even acceptance. Is this something that has happened to her, or is it, in some unknowable way, something that she wants?

The artist of the painting is Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who is teaching an art class filled with women during a brief prologue, some years after the bulk of the main story. She is posing for her students, teaching them the basics of portraiture, when she spots the piece. A student has displayed it, and as Marianne considers the picture, her face drops. Later, after the full account of Marianne's relationship with the subject of the painting unfolds, a student shows her teacher her own sketch. "You have made me look quite sad," Marianne notes. "You were," the student responds.

Some years prior, a countess (played by Valeria Golino) has tasked Marianne to paint a portrait of the noblewoman's daughter, who is to marry a Milanese gentleman—of unknown name and quality but of some wealth. The marriage was first meant for the daughter's elder sister, but while walking along the cliffs above the beach of this place, the sister fell. Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), the maid of the mansion, isn't certain what happened, but she does know one thing, which leads her to believe the first mistress of the house jumped: She did not cry out at any point.

There was an initial attempt to paint the younger daughter's portrait, intended as a wedding gift for the future husband. That painter gave up, though, after the daughter refused to pose for him. The painting remains in the reception room, which has temporarily become Marianne's bedroom and studio. The portrait is incomplete in a most noteworthy way: The body, adorned in a green dress, is finished, but the face remains blank.

The daughter is Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), and the plan is for Marianne to paint her portrait without the daughter being aware of it. Marianne will accompany Héloïse on her daily walks, and on that first walk, after Héloïse makes a sprint for the cliff before suddenly stopping at the edge, Marianne and we first see the face that caused such trouble for one artist and has engendered such curiosity. It's striking, not only for Héloïse's beauty but also for the look on it—the unmistakable signs of sadness, for all of her losses, and anger, for the unfairness of her situation, and resilience, for taking advantage of this brief moment of freedom.

The rest of the story, which has Marianne secretly (the third painting) and then openly (the fourth one) painting Héloïse's portrait, is entirely about the growing relationship between the artist and her subject. Sciamma spends much time observing the faces of these two women, as they observe each other and, in the act of simply looking at the other woman, reveal much about themselves. Marianne notes how her face displays various feelings, and Héloïse calls the artist to where she is sitting, pointing out that she has had as good a view of Marianne as the artist has had of her.

These two women, who do a little dance of head turns during their first walk (Marianne looking and then turning away when she notices Héloïse looking at her), become quite intimate, by looks and by brief but pointed conversations, before anything romantic emerges. The actual romance, then, is all the more affecting, because it is not forbidden or born of some strife.

It evolves naturally, and in the process, Sciamma delves into deeper ideas, not only about the relationship between art and the artist, but also about how such fleeting moments can become eternal by their reflection in art. The myth of the poet Orpheus, who traverses into the underworld to save his beloved Eurydice and loses her with a single look back, becomes a topic of debate between Marianne, Héloïse, and Sophie (who's involved in a subplot about an unwanted pregnancy, which does have a point when Héloïse convinces Marianne to recapture a taboo moment through art). Marianne argues that, in that moment, he was thinking as a poet, not as a lover. Héloïse wonders if Euydice told him to turn.

There's a similar sense of mourning and the inevitable to Marianne and Héloïse's story, which must, as we know from the prologue, end. Marianne has visions of Héloïse in a white dress, the ghost of a love that's fated both to end and to endure (illuminated by a spotlight, creating a hauntingly lovely image amidst cinematographer Claire Mathon's use of natural lighting, complementing how grounded the relationship is).

The third act of the film wrestles with time in deeply affecting ways, from the lovers' final night, trying to capture as many moments as possible, to an epilogue that jumps forward twice—once to that fifth painting (and a heartbreaking detail) and again to a moment of quiet observation (The lead performances are great overall, but Haenel's final moment, in particular, is transcendent). Portrait of a Lady on Fire has the patience and the compassion to observe and communicate these women and this relationship as they are, as they were, and as they always will be.

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