Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) – C. Sciamma

It is tempting to see this film as revealing “secret women’s business” – not meant for the eyes of men – but that might serve to detract from the universal human emotions and experience conveyed by the characters and story.  Yet I am open to the possibility that love between two women feels different than love between a man and a woman (I shall never really know). The fact that this story takes place in the late 1700s heightens the “forbidden” and tragic aspects of the love affair between Heloise (offered by her mother to a Milanese noble) and Marianne the artist invited to paint her portrait. There are no men in the film to speak of, but aside from the mother (away for much of the film), there is a maid who is, probably unrealistically, treated as an equal by the two leads (and for whom we see the Eighteenth Century solution to another woman’s problem, this one a direct result of a man’s action). The three women make the most of the mother’s absence, enjoying their freedom and for Heloise (Adèle Haenel, previously in a relationship with the director Céline Sciamma) and Marianne (Noémie Merlant), it is a chance to explore their desires. If this all sounds a bit too mushy, in fact, the film feels rather stately and emotionally restrained for most of its length, making the rush of freedom that much more exciting, and the inevitable denouement that much more painful.  The isolation of the island and the crashing waves of the ocean offer a scenic (and metaphoric?) backdrop (and the film’s title turns out to be surprisingly surrealistically literal). In the end, perhaps it is the experience of seeing an ex after you have both moved on (for better or for worse) that is the more universal bittersweet feeling. However, when it is society that has blocked the relationship from continuing, the sadness may be much more palpable -- with the film’s obvious implication a hope that such barriers are no longer imposed today.