Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) Review: The Art of Looking

Is Portrait of a Lady on Fire worth watching?

Yes. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a near-flawless romance, as rigorous in its craft as it is overwhelming in its feeling. Céline Sciamma turns the relationship between an artist and her model into a love story about equality, where watching someone becomes an act of intimacy. The only real reservation is temperament: its restraint, silence and slow pace will feel austere to viewers who want period drama with more incident.

What is Portrait of a Lady on Fire about?

In late 18th-century France, the painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is rowed to a remote island off the coast of Brittany with a delicate commission. A countess (Valeria Golino) wants a portrait of her daughter, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), to send to the Milanese nobleman she is to marry. Héloïse does not want the marriage and has refused to pose. So Marianne is introduced as a hired walking companion, and must study her subject in secret by day and paint her from memory at night.

In the near-empty house, with the countess away and only the young maid Sophie (Luàna Bajrami) for company, the two women grow closer as the portrait takes shape.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is written and directed by Sciamma. It is a French-language film running 122 minutes. It won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2019, and Claire Mathon’s cinematography won the César.

A love story built on the gaze

Sciamma’s great insight is to make looking the film’s subject and its method. At first Marianne stares at Héloïse as a painter studies a model, noting the shape of an ear, the position of hands. Gradually, Héloïse starts looking back, and the film becomes a negotiation between two people who see each other clearly. It is a quiet but pointed response to centuries of paintings, and films, that looked at women without letting them return the gaze.

Claire Mathon’s photography has the texture of oil paint: saturated greens and reds against grey sea and rock, faces lit by candle and hearth. Every frame is composed with care, yet the film never feels like a museum piece, because the camera stays so close to the actors’ faces.

Silence, fire and one unforgettable song

Sciamma almost entirely dispenses with a musical score, and the effect is extraordinary. The soundtrack is waves, wind, the scratch of charcoal and the crackle of fire, so when music does appear it lands with enormous force. A night-time gathering of the island’s women, singing around a bonfire, is the film’s most famous sequence, eerie and ecstatic at once.

Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel are superb together. Merlant plays Marianne as sharp and watchful, a professional whose composure slowly cracks. Haenel gives Héloïse a guarded intelligence and a wry humour that make her far more than a tragic heroine. Luàna Bajrami’s Sophie is essential too: scenes between the three women, cooking, reading and playing cards as equals, create a small, temporary world outside the rules of the era.

Rigour that can feel cool

The film’s control is its strength, but it can also keep viewers at arm’s length. The first half-hour is especially spare, the dialogue is precise to the point of formality, and the pace is deliberately slow. Some viewers will find the formal perfection more admirable than moving, at least until the emotion breaks through.

Who should watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire?

It suits anyone who loves romance and period drama, art-house cinema, or films about art and memory. Give it two uninterrupted hours and your full attention: this is not a film for a distracted watch. There is some nudity and non-explicit sex, and the story addresses an unwanted pregnancy frankly, so it is better suited to older teenagers and adults.

If it moves you, try these next:

• Blue Is the Warmest Color, a contemporary French love story between two women, told in a far rawer and more contested style.
• Happening, Audrey Diwan’s taut drama about a young woman’s struggle for control over her own body.
• Anatomy of a Fall, another precise, prize-winning French film anchored by a formidable lead performance.

The verdict

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a masterful romance and a thoughtful film about art, memory and who gets to look at whom. Its restraint will test some viewers, but those who give themselves to its rhythm will find one of the most emotionally charged films of recent years.

Rating: 4.5/5