Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu
Writer & Director
English Title
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Year
2019
Synopsis
Trailer
Form
Feature film (2h)
Editing
Julien Lacheray
Music
Jean-Baptiste de Laubiere (Para One) & Arthur
Simonini
Cinematography
Claire
Mathon
Casting
Christel
Baras
Executive Producer
Bénédicte
Couvreur
Press Attaché
François
Hassan Guerrar
|
Honours/Awards
César Awards
New York Film Critics Online
AND LOTS LOTS MORE! |
Excerpts from Reviews
(my bolding)
“What a thrillingly versatile film-maker Céline Sciamma has
proved to be. Having made an arthouse splash with the Euro-hits Water Lilies and Tomboy,
she wrote and directed Girlhood (Bande de filles),
a breathtaking portrait of modern “banlieue life” that completed her
“accidental trilogy of youth”. Her impressive screenplay credits include Claude
Barras’s My Life as a
Courgette, a tenderly empathetic, French-Swiss stop-motion
masterpiece that earned an Oscar nomination for its vividly resilient depiction
of children in care. In each of these very different projects, Sciamma has
struck an accessible chord by focusing tightly on specifics, finding the key to
universal appeal in the unique, tiny details of each story and character.”
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/01/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-review-celine-sciamma
“It is the fourth feature by French auteur
Céline Sciamma as director, coming after Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood,
although her writing credits are more numerous and include the animated
heartbreaker My Life As A
Courgette. Her recurring obsession is with marginalised people, who
are often queer, and their social microcosms at times of palpable discovery and
growth. Stories are driven by naturalistic events, but powered by emotions too
huge to ever be fully articulated. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is
both a natural progression in Sciamma’s work and a formal departure of
existential consequence, for the story it tells is framed as a memory,
bookended by two scenes from a future time. As such, the audience perceives the
story as both a real-time event, and a treasure from the past.
…
Of Sciamma’s many strengths, it is her screenwriting that lays the rhythm of
this tale. She is in no hurry to take the romance to a place of heated
declaration and sexual exploration. Her focus is on developing each character
in tandem, so their connection and mutual trust unfolds by careful increments
through spending time together walking by the sea and gravitating towards each
other inside the castle, like two magnets.
…
There are theme-park rides; there is cinema; there are sacred love poems to
take with you for the rest of your life. Thank you for giving us the last one,
Céline Sciamma.”
Empire
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire/
“Sciamma has a great feel for structure, for
emotional arcs, and for pinpoint-accurate catharses that nevertheless preserve
the tantalizing enigma of her characters. The film is filled with moments of
unforgettable intimacy and passion — there are at least three scenes where you
could legitimately lean over to your companion and whisper, “That’s a portrait
of a lady on fire” — but intimacy and passion don’t always result in
understanding or clarity; often, they deepen the beloved’s mystery. As such,
the tone is sober, delicate, deliberate. Portrait of a Lady on Fire builds
and builds and builds, as we keep waiting for an explosion, a big emotional
climax. And, not unlike with another great recent import, Pedro
Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, it arrives with the very last shot — which I
won’t reveal other than to say it’s one of the finest pieces of acting and one
of the most moving images I’ve seen in eons.”
Vulture
https://www.vulture.com/2020/03/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-movie-review.html
“French writer/director Céline
Sciamma has hypnotizing powers—her spellbinding pull was unmissable in
both the sensual Water Lilies and the gleaming coming-of-age tale Girlhood. With Portrait of a Lady on Fire, she takes that cinematic magnetism to new
heights and periods, to a cliffside manor somewhere on the coast of Brittany in
the 1770s. Imbued with a buttery-matte palette and resolute, painterly strokes
of camera throughout—lensed by Claire Mathon with patient
tenacity—Sciamma’s latest tells the tale of a dreamy romance. It’s a delicate
drama that flourishes through the liberating power of art, where a hopeful yet
consuming love affair sparks between two young women amid patriarchal customs,
and stays concealed in their hearts both because of and in spite of it.
…
But above all that, Portrait of a Lady on
Fire is its own, wondrous, magnificent thing; a complete artistic vision where
every directorial step is refined and each thematic probe, seamlessly weaved
in. So when Sciamma generously brings in the storyline of Sophie (Luàna
Bajrami), a maid in need of abortion, the film doesn’t venture out of its
scope. Instead, this thread unites the patriarchy-defying themes of Portrait, while slowly building a sense of sisterhood within the confines of a remote
home that lives under the shadow of unseen men. With a heartbreaking, Call
Me by Your Name-esque finale that consumes Haenel’s emotive face (you will
never hear the Summer section of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, a
recurring motif, in the same way again), Sciamma’s gift to 2019 sets a highest
standard for any romance that will come after it.”
RobertEbert.com
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-movie-review-2019
“Other than flawless performances, the writing
needs to be acknowledged. Céline Sciamma’s poignant screenplay and words
reverberate in your mind, long after you’ve seen the movie. “Do all lovers feel
like they are inventing something?”, Héloïse asks Marianne. They talk in a
language that lovers do, interpret books, poetry and paintings like lovers do.
Art imitates life so at one point they are forced to make a crucial decision
about their life, just like the people in the poem they’d read and discussed.
To turn around or move on, regret or remember?
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is an exquisite piece
of artistic cinema, that will stay with you for years to come.”
Times of India
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/web-series/reviews/international/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire/ottmoviereview/76177603.cms
“This
is the first time that you have ever related the experience of love.
It was my initial desire to shoot a love story.
With two apparently contradictory wishes underlying the writing. Firstly, to
show, step by step, what it is like to fall in love, the pure present and
pleasure of it. There, the direction focuses on confusion, hesitation and the
romantic exchange. Secondly, to write the story of the echo of a love affair,
of how it lives on within us in all its scope. There, the direction focuses on
remembrance, with the film as a memory of that love. The film is designed as an
experience of both the pleasure of a passion in the present and the pleasure of
emancipatory fiction for the characters and the audience. This dual temporality
allows us to experience the emotion and to reflect on it.
There was also the desire for a love story
based on equality. From the casting stage, Christel Baras and I were concerned about
this balance. A love story that is not based on hierarchies and relationships
of power and seduction that exist before the encounter. The feeling of a
dialogue that is being invented and that surprises us. The whole film is
governed by this principle in the relationships between the characters. The
friendship with Sophie, the servant, which goes beyond the class relationship. The
frank discussions with the Countess who herself has desires and aspirations. I
wanted solidarity and honesty between the characters.”
Apart from two musical
moments that play a part in the plot, the film has no music.
I had
already planned to make the film without music when I was writing. I say this
because it was something that had to be thought out in advance. Especially in a
love story, where emotion is often musical. We had to think about it in the rhythm
of the scenes and their arrangement. You can’t count on music to bind them, for
example. There will be no emergency or backup melody. We’re dealing with total
scenic units. To make a film without music is to be obsessed with rhythm, to
make it arise elsewhere, in the movements of the bodies and the camera. Especially
since the film is mostly made up of sequence shots and therefore with a precise
choreography.
It was
a gamble but I did not view it as a challenge. Here too, basically, it is a
re-creation issue. I wanted to make music a part of the characters’ lives, as a
rare, desired, precious, unavailable thing. And so put the viewer in the same
condition. The relationship to art in the film is generally vital because the characters
are isolated. First of all, from the world, then from each other. The film also
tells us that art, literature, music and cinema sometimes allow us to give full
rein to our emotions.”
Notes
This
is my favourite film (ever)—the complexity of the film and the sublime performances by
Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant make re-watching it many, many times constantly
rewarding. This is because Céline has built so much complexity into every facet
of the film—the script, the performances, the cinematography, the set design,
the sound design—everything! For example, focus just on the sound design on one
re-watch—from the distant banging when Marianne is settling into her room to
remind us that the other characters are living their lives in other parts of
the chateau, the distant sounds in Marianne’s art studio telling us that her
studio is in an inhabited building, to the how the sounds of the fire crackling underscore dramatic moments of the film. Or on another re-watch just keep an
eye on fire in the shots—for example, Marianne has flames leaping behind her as
she plays the spinet for Héloïse (a woman on fire?), and also when they are in
the kitchen in the wonderfully domestic scene before they play cards. Or think
about which drinking glasses are used in each scene—Marianne is in the awkward
position of being middle class and an artist, but she is also an employee of the
family. This means that when she is with the Comtesse she drinks from a stemmed
glass, but when she dines (in the kitchen, not with the family, she is the hired help after all…)
she is given a tumbler to drink wine, water, or beer from. When the Comtesse is
away watch which glasses are used…
Céline Sciamma has crafted this film so that
each and every scene is vital. Her writing is magnificent. Read this lecture at
BAFTA (http://www.bafta.org/media-centre/transcripts/screenwriters-lecture-series-2019-celine-sciamma)
for an insight into her writing process—don’t just watch the video if you want
deeper understanding, as heaps was edited out of the video that is in the
transcript. She has directed her actresses so that each could be at her best.
Claire Mathon has filmed it to perfection. The sound design is magnificent—I
bought a sound bar to view it at home once the cinemas shut down due to
COVID-19 (before that I saw it at the cinema at least once a week). The audio at home had been fine for other films, but I needed it to
be SO much better so that I could appreciate this film. I hope that I can again watch it in a cinema with the full visual and sound experience once the pandemic has faded...).
I
have watched this film many times and still small details appear that reveal
yet another layer that Céline has built into the film. Céline deliberately
plants little things in the film for those of us who choose to dive deep.
Céline is a genius and this film is the pinnacle of her cinema achievements so
far (I have not yet seen Pétite Maman).
Merci
Céline Sciamma.
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