To be fair, it is not completely terrible. A lot of it is visually arresting; many of the scenes are composed in a satisfying manner and when we see the paint being applied to the canvas, that holds our interest for a time, although not nearly long enough to justify the length of these scenes.
It brings to mind films like "Black Swan" and "The English Patient", which were similarly incoherent, static, and wrongheaded but got great reviews by pandering to the audience, implicitly praising the movie goer with high-flown cultural references ("I like this film because I am so deep. I get all the High Culture stuff; this movie is for people with a profound artistic soul-like me!"). In the case of "Portrait of a Lady on Fire", the cultural touchstones are the "Orfeo" myth and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons". Interestingly, all these films promise an erotic experience, but fail to deliver because none of the characters bear any resemblance to real human beings.
There is a discussion of Orfeo in which one of the main characters fatuously pronounces that Orfeo looked back at Euridice because he was at heart an artist, not a lover. This is the movie in a nutshell, a mock-profound statement that becomes more and more meaningless the more you think about it.
There is nothing resembling a plausible conversation in "Lady on Fire". Most of what is said consists of aphorisms that would fit nicely inside a fortune cookie. There is a halfhearted stab at feminism, as the women create an idealized society when they can live in a wonderful world without men, and there is a subplot involving abortion, airlifted in from some other movie.
Review of Portrait of a Lady on Fire
