[star rating=”4″] PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE. Directed by Céline Sciamma, with Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel and Luàna Bajrami. Writer: Céline Sciamma. On the Labia Home Screen.
MEGAN FURNISS reviews
On Women’s Day I watched a movie written and directed by a woman, with women, for women, and I loved it.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a period piece, art film and forbidden love story, about art, and love and defiance. It is also beautiful; a stand-alone work of art in itself.
Set on an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is a painter, commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), a naïve young woman who has inherited the fate of her sister, who died.
Marianne arrives at this strange and lonely place and is befriended by Sophie (Luàna Bajrami) the maid, before meeting with La Comtesse, Héloïse’s mother, who recommends that Marianne paints her unwilling daughter on the sly – a previous painter had no luck with her because she refused to pose for him.
The rest of the movie unfolds the friendship and love affair between them; its challenges, heartbreaks, and its romantic beauty, all the while interlaced with the developing painting and the strange and isolated setting. The dialogue is sparse and controlled, the scenes slow and beautiful, and the time and place are wonderfully articulated, particularly with the help of the other characters.
This movie is original in look and feel, as well as storyline, even though there is a traditional forbidden love story being played out. The two young lovers are beautiful and different, and they spark off each other in a magical way.
Watching this film is like walking through a gallery filled with beautiful, sensual, powerful portraits of women.
It also touches on class, and the objectification of women, and generational abuse, and genuine friendship. I loved it.
A special treat is the extraordinary song sung at a festival, but I will leave that to you to discover. Pure art film at its best.
Here is a bit of trivia from IMDB. ‘According to Céline Sciamma, one of the manifestos of the film was to get rid of the idea of a muse, which she considers to be a “nice” word that actually hides the participation of woman in artistry. The muse is typically seen as a silent, fetishized woman who is inspiring just because she is beautiful. And even though for a long time, women’s opportunities in art were limited to modelling, she claims that the models were co-creating the art by being one of the brains in the room and helping to guide the artist. Her goal was to portray that and to make a love story and a dialogue with equality.’
What: Labia Portrait of a Lady on Fire review
Where: Labia online Labia Home Screen
WS
