When you elect to unfurl your story slowly, you’re taking a big risk. Audiences today are used to flash, explosions, and fast moving entertainment. A Portrait of a Lady on Fire is not just very still, it literally revolves around painting still life portraits of others. You’re probably asking yourself, “The only way I’ll watch this garbage is if everyone involved is super hot and naked.” Well they’re sometimes naked, but Portrait of a Lady on Fire is so great because it boasts the best love story of 2019, sizzling with chemistry between the leads Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel.
It’s the late 1700s on a small French island. A countess (Valeria Golino) dispatches a painter, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), to paint a woman in her care, Héloïse ( Adèle Haenel). This task is more difficult than Marianne is used to: Héloïse refuses to get her portrait done because once it is finished, she is to be married, something she does not want. In order to earn Héloïse’s trust, Marianne becomes her friend in order to study Héloïse and paint her in secret. Being confined in constant quarters with one another, Marianne and Héloïse start developing a deep connection, something past simple friendship.
Bravo to Céline Sciamma, the writer/director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire. All her decisions make the emotions she’s going for deeper and richer. Her location shout did an amazing job finding a perfect metaphor for her characters: islands are simultaneously lonely desolate isolated places that also can hold deep secrets and be safe from extensive outside forces. Depending on the scene, Sciamma mines the setting for all its metaphor can pull off. Since the movie’s forbidden romance at times feels like a Greek tragedy, Sciamma actually references a literal Greek tragedy: the story of Orpheus, presenting the story as Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s thesis. Why does Orpheus turn around to look at his love even though life awaits him one step further? Is love really that strong a force? The metaphor is a tad on the nose, but very simple, very effective, and allows Sciamma to craft some killer visuals of Héloïse in a wedding dress calling to Marianne. These little touches buoy the extremely well written love story, and give it a higher sense of meaning than just two girls who have feelings for one another. In addition, with the short time period Marianne has with Héloïse, a sense of urgency is placed on the story, as society is dictating this will be their purest, only time to forge a meaningful connection, and to not waste it. And how to best cement their feelings? Sciamma’s painting subplot, where Marianne is trying to capture Héloïse’s true essence. The painting also allows for their relationship to simmer slowly into a beautiful boil.
But Sciamma’s great screenplay doesn’t work if Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant aren’t really good actors and don’t fit together. Fortunately, both are revelations. Merlant’s Marianne starts off as this kinda smarmy artist, keeping herself at arms length from Héloïse. However, as she gets to know her subject, that artistic study gets some real world experience in what real art and beauty is, allowing herself to grow as a person and a painter. Haenel is the revelation here. Early on, she appears a blank emotionless slate, wrecked by past and future trauma to the point that she doesn’t really speak to anyone for a long time. However, Héloïse’s lack of speech doesn’t mean she doesn’t convey her feelings: there’s all sorts of great looks or tics that convey wells of her feelings: sadness, excitement, fear, contentment, etc. Not that Merlant isn’t that great at wordless communications: the first hour of them trying to figure each other out without saying much would be agony to sit through if Merlant and Haenel weren’t good. Instead, the audience feels a different agony: longing. Longing for a connection. Longing for understanding. The 2nd hour of the movie, after that connection is forged, relies on Héloïse and Marianne coming to terms with their short amount of time together, and loving a lifetime’s worth of love in a few days. Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel make you feel all those emotions swirling about the couple as they spend all their time together. You also feel both of them reach a higher understanding of true love, which previously was foreign to them. For Marianne, that means she learns how to truly paint the essence of a person. For Héloïse, that means she can be ok with the life she’s being forced to lead against her will.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a gift that keeps on giving, like loving someone. The more you invest of yourself into the movie, the easier it is to forge a connection, and find deeper parts of yourself you didn’t know exist. It’s a complicated, frustrating, but ultimately rewarding experience, even if it can’t last. I’m sure Héloïse and Marianne would agree with the age old adage “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”