Director/writer: Céline Sciamma
Photography: Claire Mathon
Music: Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, Arthur Simonini, Antonio Vivaldi
Editor: Julien Lacheray
Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami, Valeria Golino
I promised myself I would keep horserace talk to a minimum with these movie reviews based on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? (TSPDT). But honestly I’m still absorbing some of the recent changes. One of the most notable is the arrival of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, emerging from practically nowhere in the past four years to land in the top 200, in the latest update of the TSPDT aggregated critical ranking of the greatest movies ever made, at #187. TSPDT, in turn, relies heavily on the Sight & Sound polls conducted every 10 years, the latest just concluded last year, where we find Portrait landing at #30, one of only nine movies from the 21st century to make the new S&S top 100 and by far the most recent, with Parasite, which is tied down at #90 with The Leopard, Madame de..., Ugetsu, and Yi Yi.
Is Portrait of a Lady on Fire a great movie, or is it a passing critical infatuation? Obviously that will take some time to understand. It’s certainly a very good movie. Another feature of the recent S&S survey is that films focused on and/or made by women outperformed most expectations, most famously Chantal Akerman’s 1975 Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which landed at #1 in the Sight & Sound poll, all three hours and 22 minutes of it (which pushed it to #12 on the TSPDT list). The present auspicious regard for Portrait of a Lady on Fire may turn out to be a high-water mark, driven by fleeting enthusiasms. But nonetheless it’s a picture worth seeing and I’m glad I was pushed to seeing it sooner rather than later.
I promised myself I would keep horserace talk to a minimum with these movie reviews based on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? (TSPDT). But honestly I’m still absorbing some of the recent changes. One of the most notable is the arrival of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, emerging from practically nowhere in the past four years to land in the top 200, in the latest update of the TSPDT aggregated critical ranking of the greatest movies ever made, at #187. TSPDT, in turn, relies heavily on the Sight & Sound polls conducted every 10 years, the latest just concluded last year, where we find Portrait landing at #30, one of only nine movies from the 21st century to make the new S&S top 100 and by far the most recent, with Parasite, which is tied down at #90 with The Leopard, Madame de..., Ugetsu, and Yi Yi.
Is Portrait of a Lady on Fire a great movie, or is it a passing critical infatuation? Obviously that will take some time to understand. It’s certainly a very good movie. Another feature of the recent S&S survey is that films focused on and/or made by women outperformed most expectations, most famously Chantal Akerman’s 1975 Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which landed at #1 in the Sight & Sound poll, all three hours and 22 minutes of it (which pushed it to #12 on the TSPDT list). The present auspicious regard for Portrait of a Lady on Fire may turn out to be a high-water mark, driven by fleeting enthusiasms. But nonetheless it’s a picture worth seeing and I’m glad I was pushed to seeing it sooner rather than later.
A movie that Portrait reminds me very much of, The Piano, made nearly as good a showing in the Sight & Sound poll, tied for #50 (with The 400 Blows). Both movies are period pieces set in isolated places and both are focused on intensely creative women. Opportunities to explore their talents are limited. There’s a nice love story that drives Portrait, but my favorite parts are when it shows the work of drawing and painting, with the camera patiently observing the probing, iterative work of sketches and brushwork bringing images to life.
The story involves an artist, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who has been summoned to a remote island off the coast of Brittany. The time is the 18th century. Marianne is to paint a portrait of a woman who is about to be married, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Héloïse, in her turn, has been summoned from a convent to marry the man her sister was promised to before her sister died in a probable suicide. The catch for Marianne is that Héloïse refuses to sit for a portrait. She thinks Marianne has been provided by her mother as a walking companion.
Marianne and Héloïse fall in love. Their time is short and fitful, the first part of it hurt by Marianne’s deception and her attempts to paint the portrait surreptitiously. The movie takes its time. Héloïse is infuriated when she finds Marianne’s true purpose, but then agrees to sit for the portrait, partly to keep Marianne around for another week. That’s basically when all the fireworks happen, starting around the 1:20 mark, for anyone looking for another edition of Blue Is the Warmest Color. It’s far more restrained here. They open to one another partly from the collaboration on the painting and partly because the maid, Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), is pregnant and needs to terminate it and they help her. Later, in bed together, Héloïse and Marianne take some kind of hallucinogenic drug, though we never hear enough about that.
I love all the scenes of painting and sketching, but visual art is not all that lights up Héloïse and Marianne. They both love music as well, which was generally in much more short supply in the 18th century. Director and writer Céline Sciamma works this angle with a good strategy. The movie is mostly without music except for two powerful scenes. The first is almost hallucinatory, occurring around a bonfire at night, with a group of village woman singing a song a cappella with hand-clapping and high, eerie harmonies. The other occurs at the end of the movie, many years later, presumably in Milan where Héloïse moved to marry. Marianne sees her at a concert, utterly absorbed in the music, which is from the Summer section of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Héloïse does not see Marianne. Absolutely brilliant finish.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is otherwise quiet and slow but never less than interesting, filled with long beats of silence aptly filled by the deceptions and the growing intensity of the relationship between the two women. The picture makes much of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which I had to look up to understand better. In one memorable scene all three of them, with Sophie, try to parse the meaning of those last moments in the story, in which Orpheus has been instructed not to turn around and look back at Eurydice until they have departed the underworld, but at the last moment, just as they are leaving, he does so. Sophie is outraged by his stupidity, but Marianne and especially Héloïse have more nuanced views, understanding in many ways they are living out the story themselves.
The story involves an artist, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who has been summoned to a remote island off the coast of Brittany. The time is the 18th century. Marianne is to paint a portrait of a woman who is about to be married, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Héloïse, in her turn, has been summoned from a convent to marry the man her sister was promised to before her sister died in a probable suicide. The catch for Marianne is that Héloïse refuses to sit for a portrait. She thinks Marianne has been provided by her mother as a walking companion.
Marianne and Héloïse fall in love. Their time is short and fitful, the first part of it hurt by Marianne’s deception and her attempts to paint the portrait surreptitiously. The movie takes its time. Héloïse is infuriated when she finds Marianne’s true purpose, but then agrees to sit for the portrait, partly to keep Marianne around for another week. That’s basically when all the fireworks happen, starting around the 1:20 mark, for anyone looking for another edition of Blue Is the Warmest Color. It’s far more restrained here. They open to one another partly from the collaboration on the painting and partly because the maid, Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), is pregnant and needs to terminate it and they help her. Later, in bed together, Héloïse and Marianne take some kind of hallucinogenic drug, though we never hear enough about that.
I love all the scenes of painting and sketching, but visual art is not all that lights up Héloïse and Marianne. They both love music as well, which was generally in much more short supply in the 18th century. Director and writer Céline Sciamma works this angle with a good strategy. The movie is mostly without music except for two powerful scenes. The first is almost hallucinatory, occurring around a bonfire at night, with a group of village woman singing a song a cappella with hand-clapping and high, eerie harmonies. The other occurs at the end of the movie, many years later, presumably in Milan where Héloïse moved to marry. Marianne sees her at a concert, utterly absorbed in the music, which is from the Summer section of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Héloïse does not see Marianne. Absolutely brilliant finish.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is otherwise quiet and slow but never less than interesting, filled with long beats of silence aptly filled by the deceptions and the growing intensity of the relationship between the two women. The picture makes much of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which I had to look up to understand better. In one memorable scene all three of them, with Sophie, try to parse the meaning of those last moments in the story, in which Orpheus has been instructed not to turn around and look back at Eurydice until they have departed the underworld, but at the last moment, just as they are leaving, he does so. Sophie is outraged by his stupidity, but Marianne and especially Héloïse have more nuanced views, understanding in many ways they are living out the story themselves.
I recently re-watched this, and raised my rating to the highest I give. Those two music scenes are tremendous, I agree.
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