'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' (2019), Revisited
On the occasion of a recent repertory screening
NOTE: Spoilers ahead.
In the scene from which Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) derives its name, a group of women are gathered at night around a bonfire upon the cliffs of Brittany, but we know the names and circumstances on only three: of the noble class is Héloïse (played by Adèle Haenel), her young servant Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), and Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a commoner and painter.
The dozen or so others go unnamed, but in this space free of men, their insouciance suggests something like a giddy coven. Yet, for Marianne and Héloïse, these other women have for the moment ceased to exist. They stand across from one another, eyes locked, divided by the flame, and so much else. All the sudden, the coterie break into a harmonic chant, which morphs into an a cappella song, to which a few add polyrhythmic claps. In a film strategically restrained its use of music, the abrupt emergence of such sounds — out of time with the period of the film, no less — registers as a shock.
Héloïse, we earlier learn, loves music deeply but knows little of it, has heard little of it. Despite professing no faith, she entered a convent partly for the access it provides to the organ’s songs. But Héloïse has been called back from the nunnery to her family home to wed a Milanese nobleman, previously betrothed to Héloïse’s elder sister, who jumped to her death rather than carry through with the marriage brokered by her mother, the Countess (Valeria Golino). Héloïse, now the elder daughter, is to satisfy the terms of the prior arrangement.
Much happens in this moment ‘round the fire. The two women stare at one another, study one another, with intensity. Especially Héloïse. Is it love that her face expresses, or her rapturous reaction to the haunting sounds, or both?
No matter the specific cause, Héloïse fails to notice that a stray spark has caused the hem of her dress to catch fire; and even after she appears to register this fact, she does not move. Her eyes remain on Marianne; Marianne’s, on her. Neither woman budges. One of the choir enters the frame, tackling Héloïse with a blanket, tackling her, extinguishing her.
My reaction to first seeing Portrait of a Woman on Fire was not unlike Héloïse’s frozen reaction to her fiery dress. For most of its runtime I was rapt, scarcely breathing. Seeing it again recently, this time on a big screen, I was surprised by how much of the movie I had forgotten.
I remember all of Marianne’s arrival, the false pretenses to which she agrees to paint Héloïse’s portrait, the accreting longing in the women’s glances as they suss one another out; that two-shot, that god-damned gorgeous two-shot.
I also recall nearly every shot of the ending. In it, Céline Sciamma, the director, stages the film’s most powerful moments in spaces designed for the enjoyment of art — first a gallery, then a concert hall. In the former, a revelation; in the latter, a paroxysm of joy, sadness, and memory.
But here’s what I failed to remember: how goddamn funny the film is, for one. Take for example the scene in which the women search for abortifacient herbs to assist with Sophie’s unwanted pregnancy. What seems to be a conventional establishing shot of a grassy expanse is suddenly reframed by Marianne, Héloïse, and Sophie, heretofore hidden from view, popping into the shot like meercats.
There’s also the understated visual gag of Sophie’s feet dangling from the ceiling, as if she had hung herself, only to find that she’s attempting some folk method of inducing a miscarriage by hanging from the rafters.
In my first screening of the film, I was so swept up in its central romance that I failed to remember the poignant camaraderie found in its middle portion. With the Countess away for a week — and virtually no men in the film at all —, the societal rules that would circumscribe the women’s interactions with each other fall away. Marianne and Héloïse, both of higher station than Sophie, come to her aid when they learn of her pregnancy. And Sophie, who initially serves them their meals, later joins them at the table as an equal. They help secure access and bear witness to her abortion. They make art with her.
The same holds for the other women who populate this seaside village. A local midwife opens her door for Sophie and provides her with abortion care on her own bed, upon which plays her own infant child. Sciamma handles this all obliquely. We know not how this arrangement was made or if the services were rendered in exchange for money, but it certainly feels as though this interaction was rooted in empathy and mutual recognition rather than recompense.
In my memory, Portrait was also more sexually explicit than it actually is. We have longing glances, cuddles, and kisses, along with pre- and post-coital nudity, but little that one would describe as graphic. It’s a testament to the performers that their eyes and carriage suggest a carnal physicality that is not in fact there.
But the camera does linger over ecstasy, does give us something of a money shot: the final one, as it happens. The film’s concluding shot is of Héloïse, several years after the central events of the film. She is seated in the balcony of a concert hall and seen from the vantage of Marianne, situated on the opposite side of the venue.
The camera pushes in from across this expanse, slowly bringing Héloïse into close-up as the music begins below. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. She is moved by music, this we know. But it’s what registers on her face and in her body that wallops me.
The “heaving bosom” is a trope of period dramas such as these, meant to signify passion and arousal. Portrait complies, but only by replacing sexual rhapsody with aesthetic reverie. Héloïse is serene, composed as the music begins, but she quickly recognizes the melody. She has heard this piece before, years early, with Marianne, who played it on the harpsicord during their brief love affair.
With this recognition, the skin around her throat tightens, her collarbones sharpen and rise, her breathing accelerates. She closes her eyes and holds them shut for several moments; as if on the verge of swoon, her head slightly tilts.
All the while, the camera pushes ever closer. In waves or all at once: the musical sublime, the memory of Marianne and their short while together, the anguish at the strictures that kept them apart, the fire that still burns. Tears, then a smile, then a cut to black, timed to coincide with the orchestra’s concluding note from “Summer” below.
I may have forgotten aspects of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but that final shot, all two minutes and twenty-six seconds of it, I’ll never forget.
Beautiful and poignant review Justin. It's just as you described it for me as I've seen this incredible film only once, and now I want to see it twice if only for those humor-infused moments you insightfully captured, which I scarcely noticed the first time around. The ending was brutal but very fitting.