Director Céline Sciamma
Director Céline Sciamma with actress Noémie Merlant
Director Céline Sciamma with actress Noémie Merlant (left) and Adèle Haenel (right)
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (Portrait de la jeune fille en
feu) A
France (121 mi) 2019 d: Céline Sciamma
Winner of the Best Screenplay at Cannes, writer/director
Céline Sciamma is known for exploring adolescent youth identity and gender
issues with earlier films Tomboy
(2011) and Girlhood
(Bande de Filles) (2014), while she was also a co-writer in André Téchiné’s
Being
17 (Quand on a 17 ans) (2016), but this far outshines anything she’s ever
done before, easily her most fully mature effort, resembling a
performance-driven Jacques Rivette film mixed with the bold feminism of Jane
Campion’s The
Piano (1993), where the breathtaking beauty of the Brittany seaside coast
draws apt comparison, given the painterly detail of cinematographer Claire
Mathon. Unlike Abdellatif Kechiche’s award winning film Blue
Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adèle, Chapitres 1 et 2) (2013), the first
gay/lesbian themed film to win the Cannes Palme d’Or, Kechiche was criticized
for portraying lesbian sex through a male gaze, suggesting it revealed far more
about the male director’s desires than how women feel about intimacy, with this
film serving as the corrective, nearly entirely eliminating any presence of men
from the movie, creating a stunning 18th century historical romance between two
women that breathes with life. Very few films have ever captured female
love and desire as potently as this film, and even fewer have been seen through
a woman’s viewpoint and perspective, but this film captures the unbridled
spirit of first love by unleashing the female gaze, with so much of the film
built around that artistic aesthetic, adding so much internalized complexity,
with long wordless sequences where the women send long gazes or quick glances
at each other, effectively using a naturalistic setting, culminating with a
rapturously unedited final shot that may come to define this film for
years. So many gay love stories have felt compromised, as the gay person
involved in the project has been overruled by outside forces, leaving certain
details suspect, where the intimacy just doesn’t feel authentic. That
simply doesn’t happen here, grounded by the brilliant performances of the two
leads, where Marianne (Noémie Merlant) has been commissioned to paint a
portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), a reluctant bride who has been called away
from the convent in the wake of her sister’s death, only to learn she’s been
promised in marriage to her late sister’s fiancé, with the portrait to be sent
to her future husband in Milan, a man she’s never met, as her widowed mother
(Valeria Golino), an Italian countess, has made all the marital arrangements in
order to return to prominence in Italy. What makes this more personal
than usual is that Haenel and Sciamma are former lovers, where the film was
written with Haenel in mind. As a result, this love story navigates its
own way through unchartered territory with an innate sense of familiarity and
cinematic gravitas, feeling vibrant and new, where the result is positively
jaw-dropping.
While Merlant is a relatively new face, Haenel has been seen
before in Katell Quillévéré’s Suzanne
(2013), which hasn’t played anywhere in the vicinity since an initial festival
screening, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s The
Unknown Girl (La Fille Inconnue) (2016), and Robin Campillo’s 2017
Top Ten List #8 BPM (Beats Per Minute (120 battements par minute).
Given a brief classroom introduction with Marianne posing as she instructs her
young art students, “Take time to look at me,” which becomes a central theme
for the film. Jumping almost immediately into a flashback, Marianne is
seen arriving by boat rowed by men to a small, isolated island, where the rough
seas offer a rude awakening, leaving her completely drenched when she arrives
on shore, having to hike up a steep cliff carrying her own gear to an isolated
chateau of an aristocratic family. Greeted warmly, given a spacious room,
she develops an easy rapport with Héloïse’s servant, Sophie (Luàna Bajrami),
before meeting the Countess, explaining the difficulty of the assignment, as
her daughter refused to sit for the previous painter, so she instructs Marianne
to observe her closely, that her daughter thinks she’s just a walking
companion. Much like Hitchcock’s Gothic Rebecca
(1940), where a new wife (Joan Fontaine) is overwhelmed by a potent series of small
clues about the previous wife who was beloved by all, the first Mrs. de Winter,
the impeccable Rebecca, the introduction to Héloïse is similarly quite clever,
moving to the front where she remains concealed behind the hood of her cloak,
so all viewers can see is a quick glimpse of her blond hair, or an ear lobe, or
the sight of a single eye staring back curiously. She’s equally adamant
about her uncertain future, remaining defiantly aloof, not really invested in
the idea of marriage, as it was not her own choice, though it does conform to
the custom of the times in aristocratic circles as a way of maintaining noble
status. Marianne, who is all eyes, must study every small detail and
commit it to memory before retreating to her chamber room at night to draw and
paint in private, given only five days, which are lost in nervous
uncertainty. Preferring to show the final portrait to Héloïse herself,
she’s not immediately taken by it, feeling blindsided by an act of sabotage,
thinking she’s been tricked. So Marianne impulsively paints over her
face, rejecting it as well, which doesn’t exactly sit well with the Countess
who is off on a planned trip to Italy, but will return in five days, offering
her another chance, with Héloïse strangely agreeing to sit for the portrait
this time. This puts them on more equal footing, and while Marianne has
no noble lineage, she has experience in the world, bringing a well-informed and
somewhat modern perspective, so when Héloïse is scrutinized so closely, she
responds with equal force, becoming a battle of wits, with both sides equally
matched. The essential historical truths ring true, as in this era women
are deprived of choosing who they want to marry, whether or not to bear
children, and also what they depict on the canvas, as women were prohibited
from using male models, effectively minimizing their artistic reach. For
instance, what 18th century female painters can you name? Not that there
weren’t any, but who’s heard of them? Their exclusion from the profession
was no accident.
Sciamma has the foresight to include the importance of
Sophie, who is not overlooked, but is a constant presence in the lives of these
two women, viewed as sincere and forthright, but undergoes draconian measures
when she has what amounts to a painful abortion, which is given a surreal
context, particularly when she is lying on a bed next to a newborn infant, yet
the powerful imagery is transformed to an angelic painting where it is given an
altogether different meaning. An historical costume drama accentuating
the female form, one interesting facet on display is exposed cleavage, where
interestingly the lowest on the economic scale (Sophie) reveals the most, while
the most wealthy (Héloïse) reveals the least, though the Countess beats all the
young contenders by a mile. With her mother away, the women exude greater
freedom, but spend a great deal of time each day working together, with Héloïse
becoming an artistic collaborator, not content to be a passive subject (while
Sophie does embroidery), developing a romantic friendship that grows by leaps
and bounds, but instead of sex on display, which is what male filmmakers
prefer, what matters to these women is establishing trust and understanding,
which happens before anything turns physical. While the Edenesque look of
the island takes centerstage, becoming an idyllic and highly romanticized
dreamscape, it’s also clear that Sciamma has carefully constructed a dialogue
of co-equals, which extends into their relationship, making what might appear
to be a highly idealized utopian dream to be an essential core of their
existing reality. That may be the most exquisite feature of the film, but
it’s well established before the first kiss and the smoldering emotions erupt
onscreen, which only accentuates the heart of the message being sent to
viewers, as this is not some artificialized triviality, but the real
thing. Perhaps the scene of the film takes place at night as there is a
gathering of many women standing around a fire, perhaps dozens, where the
darkness of the night actually creates a background look of Da Vinci, given a
painterly look in historical detail, when out of nowhere this women’s a capella
chorale, composed for the film by Jean-Baptiste de Laubier and Arthur Simonini,
La Jeune Fille en Feu
(Bande originale du film) - YouTube (3:03), creates a special excitement,
using multiple musical refrains, like singing in rounds, where each of the
women in the picture comes alive. It’s a startling moment, but utterly
enthralling, building to a scorching intensity, culminating with Héloïse’s
dress catching on fire, which seems to release all the repressed desires.
Another musical motif is heard at the end, connecting to an earlier sequence
when Marianne was describing the sound of a symphony, something Héloïse had
never heard, using words poetically to emphatically create the rush of
exhilaration from the “Summer” Presto section from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto
L'estate RV 315 – YouTube (2:49), which is heard again in a miraculous
final shot, the camera fixated on the subject, with a stream of emotions simply
cascading through one’s veins, exuding a feeling of utter jubilation, while
also punctuating an air of untold tragedy, recalling the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, where the euphoria
simply can’t last. All in all, this redefining film is truly a majestic
experience.
