Gazing at Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Celine Sciamma’s historical romance Portrait Of A Lady On Fire begins with Marianne (Noémie Merlant) as she climbs into a little rocking boat, struggling with her canvases. She’s a painter on her way to an island in Brittany. Commissioned to create a portrait of Héloïse (Adele Haenel), the daughter of an aristocrat, Marianne has to go where the rocky waves of freelance work take most people – to uncooperative clients. The young artist is called to capture Héloïse’s likeness in secret because she has dodged her portrait being painted many times. The painting is intended to be shipped to her future husband, a stranger. From the start, the jaws of a tragedy open.

When hearing the film’s name, viewers might ask, ‘Who is the woman on fire?’. That one is answered swiftly. The next one could be ‘Who is the portrait for?’. That’s trickier. It’s functionally for Héloïse’s fiance. He will get to see his future wife before the wedding, and so will the people roaming the halls of his house. But it is Marianne’s by creation. She is the artist, painting is her craft, and the portrait is an expression of her skill. The piece is certainly not for Héloïse. She refuses to have her portrait painted or for that image to loom larger than herself when she enters her new life.

Women like Héloïse, valued primarily for their appearance, are all over media. In one memorable scene from Mad Men, Joan Holloway says, ‘My mother raised me to be admired’. She accepts the hand she was dealt, which bestows her with both power and misery. Héloïse shows raging discomfort with this idea. So did her sister, who committed suicide to escape marriage. So did her mother, who is compelled to maketo make her daughters re-enact the trauma of her arranged wedding.

Héloïse’s resistance is also because of her sexuality. Though the word ‘lesbian’ isn’t used in the film, Sciamma encourages viewers and critics to use it. She also quotes Monique Wittig, who said ‘Lesbians are not totally women because they are escaping a part of the patriarchy, at least domestically or romantically.’ This desire to escape the patriarchy is why Héloïse joined a convent before the events of the movie.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is the sublime dream of gender studies teachers for its thorough scrutiny of power. Even though the fiancé never appears, his authority is inescapable. Yet for most of its runtime, the film is about three women living on an island – a noblewoman, an artist, and a maid. Their roles are tiered and defined but the three spend time talking and joking and cooking and cleaning together. A living arrangement like this would be hard to come by in another place. On this tucked away shore-facing house, ranks become murky as household responsibilities merge and peace is found in equality. A male gaze is characteristically about what men see or what men want to see. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire wanders in the private moments that cisgender men don’t see, especially from that period.

These moments are reminiscent of the way Christie K. K. Leung describes Southern-Chinese women in Jiangyong County and how ‘they loved to gather together with other female relatives, friends or neighbours. […] Their own time, their own space, and their own limited freedom enclosed by the four walls of their houses. They made shoes, they cooked, and they did spinning, sewing and embroidery together’. These women also invented Nushu – a secret language created and passed down generations within chambers for private communications. When Héloïse asks ‘Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?’, she’s referring to a secret language they’re creating – a unique language that everyone creates with loved ones. We create networks of meaning, reference, and secrecy with every new relationship.

Reciprocity is at the core of the relationship between the women. Marianne says ‘I’d hate to be in your place’ with her subject behind the canvas. Héloïse replies unexpectedly ‘We’re in the same place.’ Scholars question what Mona Lisa was thinking in her painting but rarely mutter ‘She might just be observing Da Vinci’. This exchange between the lovers unwinds the role of artist and muse, hundreds of years in the making. Marianne is as much inspiration to Héloïse as Héloïse is to Marianne. It is a collaboration, just as a film is a collaboration between actor and director. Sciamma finds the female gaze that looks at both the self and other women — a relationship rarely explored in fiction.

There are a number of fantastic films released in 2019, but A Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a must-see.

There are a number of fantastic films released in 2019, but A Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a must-see, if not the only must-see.