Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019)

Directed by: Celine Sciamma | 119 minutes | drama, history | Actors: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami, Valeria Golino, Christel Baras, Armande Boulanger, Guy Delamarche, Clément Bouyssou, Michèle Clément, Cécile Morel

How must a love between two women have felt in the eighteenth century? There is not much lore; love, however, always gives rise to dramatic imagination. In the supercooled setting of the costume drama, Céline Sciamma offers a new perspective on the painter-muse relationship, here a form that fits perfectly. Marianne (Merlant) is commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Haenel). The chemistry between the two is palpable whether you have insider knowledge or not. Consumption of love seems to be out of the question in advance, and that adds to the tension. Tension that continues in echoing footsteps, occasionally relieved by running on the beach, but never completely dissolves.

Although excellent for cinematic reproduction, visually strong and well cast, the whole initially seems a bit static. Love is there, but it cannot develop sufficiently. Fortunately, there is a second layer, the focus on the functioning of women in general during that period. A beautiful scene in which Héloïse reads from Orpheus and Eurydice and another in which Breton women sing together has an almost transcendental effect. The two lovers seem to be imagining a classic tragedy in order to express their love. A nice find from Sciamma, who returns in the final scene.

This is a movie with women about women anyway, nothing wrong with that. First it is Merlant who has the upper hand, with Haenel as the passive model. Then it’s Haenel, the more rational of the two, who leads. As if two women master the cruel role-play of impossible love as well as man and woman in the traditional film relationship. ‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’ won the screenplay prize in Cannes this year and also contains one of the most beautiful statements about love ever spoken by Héloïse at the moment of truth. “Would all lovers feel that they are imagining something?”