“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (M) *** and a half

AT the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Céline Sciamma won the Best Screenplay award with this film. And the award for best film in the (independent) Queer Palm category.

In 18^th century France, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) teaches painting to young women. One of them asks about the origin of a painting of a woman whose dress is burning. So Marianne begins her tale.

Several decades earlier, Marianne lands on a small island off the Brittany coast, where she has a commission to paint a young woman’s portrait which will be sent for approval by the Milanese nobleman to whom the subject has been promised in marriage. 

The prospective bride is Héloise (Adéle Haenel) and she does not want to be painted. Marianne’s presence is explained as for companionship while Héloise’s mother (Valeria Golino) goes to sell her daughter’s merits to the nobleman. 

The only other person in the chateau on the island is Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), a servant girl who tells Marianne that she must paint Héloise in secret at night after observing her by day. Sophie doesn’t know why she has menstruated only once.

The story is principally about Marianne and Héloise. Marianne eventually shows her a painting. Neither of them considers that it truly represents the subject. 

Marianne reads the story of Orpheus and Eurydice to Héloise. Together they abort Sophie’s foetus. The relationship develops. In time they become lovers.  There is a sequence explaining how the dress caught fire. Héloise’s mother returns. The marriage goes ahead. Marianne only twice sees the woman she loves again.  

The first time is at a gallery – a portrait of Héloïse with a child, surreptitiously holding the book in which Marianne sketched her. The second time is at a concert, overwhelmed with emotions as the orchestra plays Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, which Marianne once played for her on a harpsichord.

This is a very truncated summary of a powerful story that tells it like it is, delicately, intimately but without prurience, with admirable and poignant credibility. 

At Palace Electric and Dendy