Pi@LFF: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Source: image.net
Pi@LFF is a series of reviews made by the Pi Culture team attending the 2019 BFI London Film Festival. Here, Georgina Bartlett reviews Céline Sciamma’s transfixing female love story.
All at once, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is about the past, the future, and the present. It’s fitting that it’s also timeless. In 18th century Brittany, artist Marianne is called to the secluded home of a countess. Her task, to secretly paint a portrait of the noblewoman’s difficult daughter, Héloïse, while pretending to be a mere walking companion. The peculiarity of this commission is explained by more typical context of the time period: the painting will be shipped to a wealthy Italian gentleman looking for a wife. Other painters have been forced away by Héloïse’s steadfast refusal to do as she’s told and commit to marital bondage, and we only sympathise further upon realising that she’s mourning the loss of her sister – who likely threw herself from the nearby cliff face.
Beginning their routine walks, Marianne attempts to discreetly capture subtle movements and fractions of physicality in her mind’s eye. But Héloïse is catching on. At the risk of exhausting fiery synonyms, both leads are radiant; desire builds at an electric slow-burn, and the script’s intellect never falters as we delve through themes of discovery, loss, and memory. Put simply, Céline Sciamma’s latest is one of the most beautifully crafted and genuinely meaningful romances of the past decade. The gorgeous natural landscape – a billowy cliff walk, the tall grass, the rocky beach – ensures every frame is a painting, too, and this is only maximised by the craft of costume designer Dorothée Guiraud and the talent of a threadbare cast.
Despite the lack of a male presence in this film (there’s only one brief encounter), patriarchy looms large over the story; most frustratingly, it takes the form of time. When the countess temporarily takes leave, we are keenly aware that Marianne and Héloïse have only days to act on their feelings. As scenes tick by and social constrictions draw ever closer, Marianne continues to confront disturbing visions of her lover amongst the shadows, glowing in a white wedding dress; it’s never not apparent that the romance is also a ghost story collapsing in on itself. Where Before Sunset, another contemplative modern classic, uses urgent time constraints to build escalating dialogue between two lovers, Portrait swaps desperate speeches for pregnant silences and a soft touch. Think 2000’s In the Mood for Love or 2005’s Pride & Prejudice: authentic, drawn-out longing at its best.
Rightly described by critics as ‘modern’, Portrait doesn’t hold a contempory power in the sense that pop songs and bold typography overlay the period drama (though this is always appreciated), nor in the sense that it mismatches overtly feminist, ahistorical commentary with the setting. It is modern because each player in the story remains on equal footing, each woman is well-drawn, with their minds and souls taking centre stage, while body politics is dealt with in artistic, innovative ways. Feminism finds its voice in the absence of a muse, and in two reciprocal subjects fostering a sense of balance. Sophie, the family’s maid, is also refreshingly included in the story as a whole character with her own problems of womanhood to confront, rather than a mere accessory of the canvas. Sciamma knows exactly what she’s doing – the female gaze is compassionate, intelligent, and utterly transfixing.
In her 2014 feature Girlhood, an affecting scene pairs music and emotive imagery to capture the film’s central, titular theme: girls dance joyously to Rihanna’s Diamonds, bathed in the bright blue light of a hotel room. In Portrait, a crackling fire illuminates the open rural space, beneath a black sky, as the voice of an all-women’s choir grows to a heartstopping pitch. Both scenes are incredibly moving and drive right to the essence of who these characters are; after watching this sequence, I dare you not to say a silent prayer for more female directors.
Even this, though, is nothing on the ending. I rarely sit through the final credits of a film, usually in a hurry to reach the light and return to my Twitter feed, but I needed to sit with this one. I needed to allow the story to linger beyond the close, just as the camera had for the past two hours. But the film didn’t leave me after I exited the cinema, and it hasn’t since. There’s no final plot twist, no dramatic monologue – simply silent, transcendent emotion conveyed by a director who refuses to look away. I am desperate for Portrait of a Lady on Fire to break my heart again, and again, and again.