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Portrait of a Lady on Fire Review – High art LGBT drama

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

Thanks to compelling performances and the clever eye of director Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is an artfully crafted slow-burning romance.


In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, we see main character Marianne journeying to an isolated island in Brittany to paint the wedding portrait of a young woman recently returned to her family from the cloister. Appropriately, this film is art imitating life; the experience of watching Céline Sciamma’s latest film is eerily similar to admiring a painting hanging in an art gallery. Like every famous painting, its initial impression is a kind of irresistible magnetic pull that draws the casual observer closer. Upon closer inspection, we can admire the complexity and sophisticated technique that lie hidden in plain sight beneath a façade of simplicity that exists only at first glance. That the film includes fire in its title is no mistake. Portrait of a Lady on Fire burns slowly and burns beautifully.


The film is set in 18th Century France, but succeeds at creating a mildly amusing, though possibly unintended, juxtaposition. The purpose of painting the portrait is to secure the young woman Héloïse’s marriage to an unknown Milanese nobleman. On the surface, it might seem hard for us in a generation of selfies and Tinder to fully appreciate the lengths Héloïse’s family have gone to. But there’s a focus on technique, poses, lighting: all things good photographers take into account which means there’s something oddly relatable about the whole painstaking process of getting the portrait just right. Intended or not, Sciamma manages to draw us into an intimate drama by lowering an initial barrier that says anyone other than an artist might not appreciate a film so inscrutable.


For all intents and purposes, its cast is entirely female; men do appear but with miniscule roles of no significance, in the background almost like props. Thinking back, I can’t recall having ever seen a film with a wholly female cast. Why does that matter? Because it’s representative of an earnest commitment to the drama and the themes it wishes to speak about. The central romance feels honest, handling its LGBT themes from a unique perspective and with a deft hand. Given the historical setting, we enter with the understanding that this romance is forbidden on grounds of gender. But instead of focusing on that, it poses open-ended questions about freedom, class and love that transcend the confines of its setting. That these questions remain as relevant today highlights the understated intelligence at its core.


As a film exploring love between women and of sisterhood, it has a heavy focus on character with competent performances that are occasionally too flat and expressionless. Noémie Merlant brings poise as the young, sharp-eyed painter Marianne. Because Héloïse frustrated a previous artist by refusing to pose, Marianne pretends to be a walking companion hired to accompany her on walks, in order to paint her using quick sketches taken when her back is turned. Merlant transforms herself into a studious, meditative artist. We don’t get to see Héloïse’s face for half an hour, but Adèle Haenel similarly transforms her character into someone tossed around by fate, having left the cloister and about to enter an unwanted marriage, seizing this final opportunity to live for herself before she is once again imprisoned. Luàna Bajrami impresses as the servant Sophie, whose own story and suffering is interwoven with the slow-burning romance between Marianne and Héloïse. It approaches love from different angles; as a considerate, insightful LGBT romance as well as a story about sisterhood between the traumatised. This film often manages subtlety, but sometimes goes overboard.


However, it’s both well-executed and beautifully detailed. The soundtrack and music are sparse for the most part, but there are scenes with both that are stirring and shouldn’t be spoiled. It’s rife with strong imagery and rich colour, and at times our characters seem to be caught between fire and water, with the roaring swell of the ocean, waves breaking on a cold beach and crackling fires that would lend the film an almost primal quality had Sciamma not applied some careful restraint. It’s paced patiently, contenting in showing us close-ups of faces and shots of Marianne sketching and painting, pencils gently scratching dark lines and brushes daubing paint on canvas. The impressive cinematography complements Sciamma’s intention to depict intimacy with warmth and humanity, bringing us close to the character, rather than opting for explicit, raw sexuality.


It’s still a slow-burning drama and highly focused art cinema, and that won’t cater to everyone’s tastes. Sciamma chooses an abundance of pregnant pauses and artistic imagery, some of which are better suited to the stage than on film, and as beautiful as the film is as a whole, it’s difficult not to feel a little wearied by the time the credits roll. All problems inherent in films of this genre and type however, and none of them prove truly fatal.

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