“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” Breaks Your Heart in the Most Beautiful Way
Céline Sciamma unmasks the reality of how women live and experience art in a light that has never been seen before. Ever.
Adèle Haenel as Héloïse in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” / NEON
I could not let another week pass without writing about “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” I was lucky enough to see the French 18th Century period piece writer and director Céline Sciamma won Best Screenplay for at Cannes last year in a theater followed by a Q&A with Sciamma herself. Now anyone who has access to a Hulu account is lucky enough to stream what Sciamma calls a “manifesto about the female gaze.”
Marianne (Noémie Merlant) arrives at an isolated island in Brittany and is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who has just left the convent. Reluctant to marry an Italian suitor who will receive the portrait before she arrives in Milan, Héloïse believes her mother hired her as a companion. Marianne paints her by candlelight at night using the memory of subtle glimpses she catches of her on their cliffside walks during the day. Their intimacy and attraction to one another grow into a consuming love for each other and the art they immerse themselves in together.
In a world where the male gaze is shoved in our faces with every advertisement, TV show, film and really anywhere it can exist, Sciamma gives us the female gaze through a lens that introduces a world of new ideas based in and around patriarchy, rather than suggestions. And she does so without depending on a score to cue us in on how to feel.
The film begins with Marianne teaching a painting class when she has a flashback, which is the rest of the story that plays out from her perspective until we meet her in the present-day again at the end of the film. The only sight of men is about three minutes in and during the very last scenes, with most of their backs turned to the camera. Five of them row Marianne in a boat to the estate Héloïse lives when her wooden crate of canvases falls into the water and is carried away by the irregular waves. Without hesitation, she jumps in to salvage them and right away introduces the idea that even when men are beside her, Marianne does not need them.
Male domination in their world is clear but forgotten in the pockets of desire that drives Marianne, Héloïse and the housemaid Sophie (Luàna Bajrami) to latch onto blissful moments of freedom when Héloïse’s mother, the Comtesse (Valeria Golino), leaves the estate for a few days. They are so expressive of passion for their freedom, it is easy to forget to separate the actors from their characters as if you are peeking into their real lives. But as we are introduced to more details of why Héloïse does not want to be painted, the reality of society pulls us back into their struggles.
In their short span of utopia, Sciamma introduces new ideas to the audience, which she expanded on at the Cinépolis Q&A in Chelsea. After one of their sex scenes, Marianne and Héloïse rub some sort of hallucinogenic drug on their armpits. Sciamma said she was wondering how she could make the exploration of drugs look different and translate into the open ideas of sex. She said not that many people know that “The armpit is the second clitoris.” The audience reacted in silence, then laughter as if everyone was comprehending what she had just said simultaneously.
In an earlier scene, the film confronts the usual idea of abortion when Héloïse looks away from one happening right in front of her. Marianne turns to her and says, ‘look.’ That one word signifies the power in facing the crevices of a woman’s life that are made out to be so hidden and grotesque, we are programmed to look away even when they are right in front of us.
Merlant (left), Haenel (middle) and Sciamma (right) on the set of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Sciamma previously wrote and directed “Girlhood” and “Water Lilies.” / NEON
“A relationship is about inventing your own language,” Sciamma told the Independent. “You’ve got the jokes, you’ve got the songs, you have this anecdote that’s going to make you laugh three years later. It’s this language that you build.” Sciamma invents Marianne and Héloïse’s language through their shared love of literature, music and artwork.
A prominent peak in the film comes a little more than halfway through. Young girls gather by a bonfire and chant the Latin lyrics “Fugere non possum” that Sciamma wrote, which she said translates to “they come fly.” She said she adapted this line from Friedrich Nietzsche’s sentence,“The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
The girls’ harmonized chanting and clapping snap you into a trance in which all you can focus on is Héloïse’s gaze into Marianne’s eyes that barely breaks, even as the trim of her gown catches fire. This scene both escalates the acknowledgment of their attraction to one another and introduces the girls who society thought of as witches, and what they did for fun when they hung out.
The film does not need a score to cue the audience in on how to feel when Héloïse reads “Orpheus and Eurydice” aloud or when Marianne plays the piano for her after she confesses she has never seen an orchestra live despite her love of music. These moments tell you everything you need to know about what they are feeling.
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is the result of a woman pouring her heart, soul and all she knows into a visual work of art for marginalized groups to look to. Sciamma makes sure the learned language of the film pays off in the two scenes she concludes the film with, one for Marianne and Héloïse, and one for the audience. You will get up off your couch with the understanding of what it means to mourn over a language invented out of love and how to celebrate it.