“Portrait of a Lady on fire”, a film by Céline Sciamma
We won’t beat around the bush: Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a masterpiece. We said so when we first saw it and, as the years have passed, that statement has become increasingly difficult to dispute.
Céline Sciamma’s fourth feature film (Water Lilies, Tomboy, Girlhood) is one of those films in which virtually nothing seems to have been left to chance. A love story, yes, but also an extraordinarily lucid reflection on the gaze, desire, artistic creation, freedom and memory.
The story takes us to Brittany, France, at the end of the 18th century. Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a young painter, is commissioned to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), the daughter of an aristocrat who intends to send it to Milan so that her prospective husband can see what she looks like before agreeing to the marriage. The problem is that Héloïserefuses to pose. She knows perfectly well what the painting represents: it is not simply her image, but the instrument through which a future over which she has almost no say will be decided.
Marianne must therefore observe her in secret during their walks and later paint her from memory. And it is precisely here that Sciamma introduces one of the film’s most fascinating ideas: looking at someone is never an entirely innocent act.
At first, Marianne observes Héloïse in order to reproduce her likeness. She studies her hands, the shape of her ears, her gestures, the way she walks, the light on her face. But little by little, that professional gaze begins to turn into something else. Observation becomes curiosity; curiosity becomes fascination; and fascination eventually becomes desire.
And then something even more interesting happens: Héloïse looks back. That shift is essential. The model ceases to be merely an object of representation and returns the artist’s gaze. As the two women begin to truly know one another, the relationship between observer and observed is destabilised, eventually becoming an exchange between equals.
Observation becomes curiosity; curiosity becomes fascination; and fascination eventually becomes desire.
Looking and being looked at
Given the context in which they live, the story of Marianne and Héloïse is also that of two women who, for one very brief interval, find a space in which they can relate to one another beyond what the world expects of them.
Their love story emerges almost unintentionally and against all odds. And precisely because they understand very early on that it has an expiry date, it acquires an extraordinary intensity.
Sciamma deliberately avoids turning their relationship into a conventional romance. She has no need for grand declarations or narrative contrivances. Everything happens through the smallest of gestures: a look held for a fraction of a second longer than necessary, a restrained smile, two hands moving closer together, a walk, an apparently insignificant conversation.
As viewers, we occupy a privileged position. We become genuine voyeurs of those tentative beginnings: the penetrating and sometimes elusive glances, the first smiles, the first touches, the first quickening of the pulse. There is an entire non-verbal language that seems to belong to them alone, yet Sciamma allows us to understand it without ever needing to explain it.
But perhaps one of the most radical decisions in Portrait of a Lady on Fire lies precisely in what is almost entirely absent from the screen: men.
For much of the film, its universe is inhabited exclusively by women. And that absence completely transforms the way we see them. Marianne, Héloïse and Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), the household maid, exist beyond the male gaze and establish relationships with one another that challenge, however temporarily, the social and gender hierarchies of their time.
There is an almost utopian freedom to those days they share. They cook, talk, work, read, paint and help one another. For a few days, the house and the landscape surrounding it seem to become a small, self-contained world.
Art as a way of remembering
Art runs through the entire film, but it does not simply serve as a beautiful backdrop. It is one of its central themes.
Marianne paints Héloïse, but in doing so she is also trying to understand her. And Sciamma uses the creative process to raise questions about who has the right to look, who constructs an image, and how much of a person can ever truly be contained within one.
Art runs through the entire film, but it does not simply serve as a beautiful backdrop. It is one of its central themes.
The first portrait is revealing. It may be technically correct, but Héloïse does not recognise herself in it. Something is missing. What is missing is precisely what cannot be obtained through clandestine observation: the relationship between them.
When Marianne paints her again after having come to know her, the portrait ceases to be merely a physical representation. It contains a shared experience.
And it is here that the film begins to speak about something far more universal: how we preserve those who are no longer with us. Because when a story is destined to end, remembering becomes another way of loving.
The reference to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which the protagonists read and discuss, is no coincidence. Why does Orpheus turn around when he knows that doing so means losing Eurydice? Is it the decision of the lover or of the poet? Does he choose to preserve the memory rather than continue living the reality?
The question runs silently through the entire film, eventually acquiring a devastating significance.
A film that looks as though it has been painted
Visually, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is extraordinary. Claire Mathon’s cinematography transforms every frame into a composition that could belong on a canvas. The natural light, candlelit interiors, the blue of the sea, the green and red dresses, the cliffs of the Breton coast and the fire that gives the film its title all create a world of almost painterly beauty.
But that beauty is never merely ornamental, as the image is constantly at the service of what the characters are feeling.
The use of music is equally extraordinary. Sciamma dispenses almost entirely with a soundtrack for much of the film, so that when music finally appears, its effect feels almost physical.
The scene around the bonfire — the women’s voices swelling into a kind of collective trance as Héloïse stands before Marianne — is one of those sequences that is difficult to forget. And the later use of Vivaldi ultimately takes on a significance that goes far beyond musical accompaniment.
Precisely because the film has worked so extensively with silence, when the music arrives, it feels as though something has suddenly opened up completely.
The memory of what might have been
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is an ode to love, but it may be even more powerful as a film about the memory of love.
Sciamma understands something essential: a story does not have to last in order to transform a life. Some relationships exist for a matter of days and remain with us for decades. Some people disappear from our present and yet continue to shape the way we see the world.
Sciamma understands something essential: a story does not have to last in order to transform a life. Some relationships exist for a matter of days and remain with us for decades.
That is why the impossibility at the heart of Marianne and Héloïse’s relationship does not diminish what they have experienced; it intensifies it. And it is also why the film’s extraordinary final scene is so profoundly moving. We hardly need words — only to observe a face listening to music that we already know is charged with memory. Everything we have witnessed throughout the film returns without needing to be shown again.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a deeply moving, sensual and profoundly intelligent film, filled with poetry, art, desire and love in capital letters. A work about looking at someone, being seen by that person and discovering that, even when everything comes to an end, some images remain with us forever.
A true masterpiece.
