jabberwhack Review of Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

A sublime film about the female gaze and experience

[10/10 · 19 November 2019]

I had the opportunity to go see a movie I'd been dying to watch, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu by Céline Sciamma, a French director I admire very much. It was well worth the wait! Like her other films, it's subtle, nuanced, elegant, it centers women's narratives and touches upon themes of queerness and gender. It's a exquisite movie about the female gaze (and also female desire, friendship, solidarity, love, secrets, passion, and intomacy). The plot goes like this: in the 18th century, a female painter (Marianne) is hired to paint the portrait of a young woman (Héloïse) in order for the said portrait to be sent to Héloïse's would-be husband. This becomes an excuse for two intelligent, beautiful women to stare at each other intensely, longingly for hours. The desire and flirtation had me on the edge of my seat. The movie is a huis clos. During most of it, you only see 3-4 women together, somewhere on the coast of France in an empty castle. (The first time a man appears on screen, it's almost shocking.) They play cards, read to each other and discuss the meaning of stories, go swimming, take care of female issues, and of course, fall hopelessly in love. The difference made by a female director was obvious to me throughout the entire film, but one detail was especially telling: at some point, the painter wakes up at night in pain. In the next scene, she's sitting in the kitchen, and the servant gives her some warmed up dry peas wrapped up in a cloth so she can soothe the pain. She is having menstrual cramps. I don't think I ever saw a depiction of menstrual pain on a screen ever in the near 1000 movies I've warched! The movie reminded me of the Virgin Suicides in the way it told the story of women who feel trapped (but this time, the observer is a woman, not some hapless dude), of The Piano on account of the period it's set in, the water, the unspoken desire, and maybe a bit of Persona (though a loving take on two women alone together and studying one another). Prepare yourself for a lot of sexy, poignant, heartbreaking cinema about women and made by women!!!