A French director’s manifesto of the ‘Female gaze’: Portrait of A Lady on Fire

A lesbian love story set in the 18th Century, is the way one would put this movie in the ‘literal’ sense and of which the category tags would appear via Google. But The Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a piece of cinematic work amounting to so much more.

The director Céline Sciamma plays out this tragedy of romance through Marianne (Noémie Merlant), an artist hired to paint the portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), a quiet daughter of a respectable household affianced to a wealthy Italian man whom she has minimal knowledge of.

Accompanying them, the screenplay also introduces Sophie (Luàna Bajrami) who is the young maid working in the house. Sciamma brilliantly creates the contrast of lives led by women during this period in time. Some brushing against the winds of freedom, and masses entrapped in cement houses, bound by shackles. As described by the director herself, Portrait of a Lady on Fire coherently displays the ‘Female Gaze’, born but undiscovered by many. The film has a remote presence of a male being but still drafts an appropriate picture of how patriarchy consumed women. We come to see Héloïse, who’s been left with the fate her sister escaped by leaping off of a cliff, and as she has no desire to marry the Italian courtier, she worries for her future. Marianne, who is set to inherit her father’s business, has travelled abroad and is relatively independent, as we come to find out, is only able to sell portraits under her father’s name. And Sophie, who’s presence leads to one of the most remarkable scenes in the film, has to get an abortion done from a local woman and this presents only one of the many glass shards women walk on.

Marianne and Héloïse, when they come to find out about their feelings for each other, portray the tenderness of romance only experienced by true lovers bound for eternity. And while the lot would be expecting some heavy sexual scenes here, Sciamma pulls onto the very felt tip of romance, residing among many and leaves us breathless as we come to experience the honest love entwining Marianne and Héloïse. Though they realize the fate bound for each of them, Marianne continues to paint her best while Héloïse, continues to sit for her, until the portrait is completed.

There comes a scene wherein, while reading Ovid’s ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ in the candlelight at the kitchen table with Sophie and Marianne, Héloïse comes to the point where Orpheus, as he’s taking Eurydice out from the underworld with him, glances back and breaks his promise, thereby making Eurydice fall back into hell and separating them once again. Here, Marianne points out how perhaps Orpheus instead of loving Eurydice, chose to love the memory of her. This indicates that he did have the liberty to make a choice and he made the poet’s, when he turned around. And that very statement comes to resonate with us, the audience, as the film comes to an end, with nothing remaining but a stretch of Vivaldi and page 28 of a book borrowed.

I strongly recommend this amazing piece, written and directed by Céline Sciamma. It can lead many to the amazing world of French cinema and brilliant women in writing.