Portrait of a Lady on Fire: More a smoulder, but a rich picture of two women's relationship in pre-Revolution France.

By Karen Gordon

Rating B-plus

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait De La Jeune Fille En Feu)  is a stately-paced slow-burn of a film about repression, love, and the secret life of women in  the 18th century, and beyond.

It arrives in theatres almost a year since lighting up the Cannes Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay and the Queer Palm. It’s gone on to win other awards, including Best Director from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. It’s nominated for 10 César Awards (the French Oscars), including Best Picture, Best Director, best Screenplay and Best Performance by both lead actresses. 

Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel in Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Writer/Director Céline Sciamma  sets her film in 1770 in France. Painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) has been summoned to an isolated house on a rugged island in Brittany and commissioned to paint a portrait of a lovely young woman named Heloise (Adèle Haenel).  

The job is straightforward. The circumstances are not.

Heloise is to be married to a nobleman from Milan, whom she has never met. She is deeply unhappy and has refused to pose for the portrait, causing the previous portrait painter to quit in frustration. Her mother The Countess (Valeria Golino), has concocted a plan.   Heloise has been told Marianne is a companion, hired for a week, to accompany her on daily walks. Marianne will then retire to her room and paint the portrait from memory. 

The two walk and talk.  Heloise is keenly aware of her feelings and able to articulate them. The two women have different paths. Marianne does not plan to marry and, given that she has a vocation, doesn’t have to. Both are serious and thoughtful.  They don’t fill their time with chatter, but are more reflective. 

While they walk in the sun, Marianne carefully studies her subject noting details she’ll need when she paints -  the expressions on Heloise’s face, the way the sun plays on her subject’s skin. Heloise observes her companion as well. Looking at each other in this way, leads to an empathy for each other that slowly starts to turn into something deeper.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is about as quiet a film as you can make. There’s no soundtrack music. Instead we hear the crackle of the logs in the fireplace and the sound of their shoes on the wooden floors that creak underfoot as they walk in the house. Outside, we’re aware of the sounds of sea birds, and the waves breaking on the shore. 

Director Sciamma doesn’t over-play the sensuality. She uses the stillness to  create a deeper intimacy between the two women. And for us, the quiet, and the calm, measured pace of the film draws our attention to their growing bond.  That bond, she suggests, is deep and in some ways an almost spiritual connection.

But, this isn’t a film that suddenly bursts out at you. Sciamma, like her characters, works by restraining everything. She doesn’t rush the story or focus on a building sense of hunger or passion. The title notwithstanding, the movie is a slow burn, not a fire. 

We’re seeing this world mostly through the eyes of Marianne, and there are moments of uncertainty.  Her character necessarily holds her emotions in. But Merland gives a deeply internal performance, managing to convey her changing feelings in subtle ways - most concretely, as a painter trying to get her secret portrait right. As her relationship with Heloise changes, her ability to capture her face becomes more elusive, frustrating her. 

The feeling is enhanced by the cinematography of Claire Mathon, who, at times fills the screen with images that feel as rich as a  painting,  focusing on sun-kissed skin tones, or rich colours observed in firelight,  evoking sensuality of the surroundings.  

For a while anyway, this is a place of freedom and choices, where the women have the agency to act on their feelings, and create a world that is open to all possibilities. 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Written and directed by Celine Sciamma. Stars Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel and Valeria Golino. Opens February 14 in Toronto and Vancouver, February 21 in other Canadian cities.