Portrait of a Lady on Fire

 Hello brosefs,

For my last post of the semester, I decided to watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), recommended to me by Lukas. Danke Lukas! I wouldn't call this movie a cult classic, but is a very critically acclaimed French indie film, so I was excited to check it out. 

The plot of the film follows a woman painter (Marianne) in the late 18th century who is commissioned to paint a portrait of a young woman on an island (Heloise), prepping for her marriage to a man from Milan that she has never met. Before Marianne meets Heloise, she talks with the woman's mother and maid, who separately reveal that Heloise's older sister committed suicide shortly before at the same prospect of marrying a stranger, and that Heloise is staunchly against getting married. One painter had been hired to paint Heloise's portrait to send to her betrothed prior to Marianne, but Heloise had refused to show her face, and the painting was unsuccessful, which Marianne sees and burns after she enters her living quarters. Since Heloise is so opposed to getting her portrait painted, her mother makes Marianne pose as her walking companion (to ensure she doesn't run away or kill herself when allowed outside), and while doing so, take in her face and paint her in secret. However, the more time they spend together, the more the two women fall in love. Heloise discovers Marianne's true occupation early on, but she decides to let Marianne paint the portrait anyway. Over the course of the film, they slowly enter a romantic and then sexual relationship, forming an unbreakable bond. Eventually, Heloise's mother returns to take Heloise to marry her betrothed, and Marianne and Heloise share their harrowing goodbyes. Years later, Marianne sees Heloise at a concert they're both attending, and watches her strong emotional reaction to a song playing that Marianne played for her when they first met (Storm by Vivaldi.)

                                                    Heloise on the left, Marianne on the right.

It was hard for me to get into this film since it was very slow moving and light on dialogue, however I'm very glad I stuck it through. It was so emotionally poignant- especially the latter half of the movie, where a theme of Marianne and Heloise being parallel to the greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice starts to be built up. The relationship between the two felt incredibly genuine and loving, which makes the end of the film all the more heartbreaking and cathartic. They'res also almost no male characters involved, and a subplot of the movie involves an abortion for the maid, so I think its ties to womanhood are very well done. I would definitely recommend checking out this film! (Bring tissues)

Have a good winter break!