Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
As a young gay man, I had never seen a movie speak the emotions I was feeling quite as well as 2017's Call Me By Your Name. Filled with beauty and raw emotion that is a film that grabbed me and to this day has not let go, it is a film that still haunts me. I still will be walking down the street listening to music when Mystery of Love of Futile Devices will come on and send me back to Italy with Oliver and Elio, two characters I love deeply that make my heart swell with emotion and pain still years after first meeting them. Call Me By Your Name hit me to a scale that no other film I have ever seen has been able to. I walked into a Portrait of a Lady on Fire with high hopes, it had gotten rave reviews wherever it went and I am always a fan of more LGBTQ+ representation in film, especially on an international level. Yet as I watched the movie it quickly dawned on me what I was watching, the power of this relationship, the poetry of their words, the intensity of their emotions. I knew I was watching a masterpiece and since seeing the movie nearly 36 hours ago at the time of finally writing this review it is a film that is haunting me. When my mind wanders it wanders to that island where this passion and love were found and makes my heart hurt. Even as I write this my hands have a slight shake to them at the memory of the film.
After her sister killed herself to get out of an arranged marriage she wanted no part of, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) is left suffering in her place. She is stuck on an island and no matter how hard she fights it she knows the inevitable wedding is right around the corner sealing her fate for a life she wants no part of. One small act of protest she is able to muster is the refusal to pose for a portrait, she won't even show her face to painters making it impossible for them to paint her which greatly frustrates her mother (Valeria Golino). Feeling like she has no other options her mother hires a young woman named Marianne (Noémie Merlant) to paint her daughter in secret. Héloïse thinks Marianne is there to escort her on walks to make sure she doesn't jump to her death like her sister and over the week they spend together the two become close and form a love beyond anything else either woman had ever faced.
There are so many elements to this movie that are just beautiful, but I feel compelled to start with the script of the film. At the Cannes Film Festival, the movie won the Best Screenplay Award and it is easy to see why. The dialogue specifically is deep and profound, coming off as poetry. It is so powerful with its emotions and passion as it builds the bridge between these two women. It also is very clean, every word has a purpose of being there with nearly every idea being revisited and respected. Yet past the dialogue, even the situations and actual events of the film are stunning, as I was talking with some people regarding the movie and we were talking about the plot itself I realize so many of those events sound like poetry when you describe them out loud. They are so well crafted and profound from an emotional and narrative standpoint. This movie overall though is just poetry, it is stunningly beautiful and leaves you speechless. As the credits started to roll in my screening unlike every other movie I saw at the 2019 San Diego International Film Festival no one moved, everyone sat feeling the weight and beauty that this movie had graced them with so elegantly. This also can be said about the cinematography by Claire Mathon and the score by Jean-Baptiste de Laubier and Arthur Simonini, both of which are truly stunning in their own right.
There are so many elements to this movie that are just beautiful, but I feel compelled to start with the script of the film. At the Cannes Film Festival, the movie won the Best Screenplay Award and it is easy to see why. The dialogue specifically is deep and profound, coming off as poetry. It is so powerful with its emotions and passion as it builds the bridge between these two women. It also is very clean, every word has a purpose of being there with nearly every idea being revisited and respected. Yet past the dialogue, even the situations and actual events of the film are stunning, as I was talking with some people regarding the movie and we were talking about the plot itself I realize so many of those events sound like poetry when you describe them out loud. They are so well crafted and profound from an emotional and narrative standpoint. This movie overall though is just poetry, it is stunningly beautiful and leaves you speechless. As the credits started to roll in my screening unlike every other movie I saw at the 2019 San Diego International Film Festival no one moved, everyone sat feeling the weight and beauty that this movie had graced them with so elegantly. This also can be said about the cinematography by Claire Mathon and the score by Jean-Baptiste de Laubier and Arthur Simonini, both of which are truly stunning in their own right.
Where the screenplay and story really do carry so much emotion and power within them it is the physical performance from our two lead actors who really bring this movie to another level. I have never felt power in performances from this year like some of the stares and glances Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel share in this film. They are so taken back by the beauty of each other and the love they have, there is so much raw emotion and power behind just the way they look at each other. This relationship is so beautiful and playful but similar to Marianne during her time with Héloïse, the movie does a great job of reminding us that their time is limited and that in only a matter of days these two will be forced to separate. Very similar to in Call Me By Your Name where the idea that summer is coming to an end and with the transition into fall Oliver will have to leave this movie plays fully into that idea of fleeting love. No matter how real or perfect their love is the truth of the situation is always there, always haunting. Though with emotions and even plot details so similar to Call Me By Your Name it is impossible to not compare the two and in that you can see a couple of places where Portrait of a Lady on Fire could have been stronger. The main area where it could have been approved was in the actual foundation of their relationship, I wish we spent more time at the very beginning of the film building their relationship up. At 2 hours long the movie does feel like a full feature but if it would have taken the Call Me By Your Name approach of really flushing the relationship out over a longer runtime I think it could have been much more effective much quicker. The actual transition from friends to lovers does feel a bit abrupt and I think we could have dived into those early stages a bit more, though that is quite minor.
Overall still other than feeling like there could have been a bit more development early on this film is stunning. By the end, it reaches some of the biggest emotional highs that I have seen from any movie this year and like I said even days after seeing the film it still stays with me. This is a film that haunts you and eats up at you, the more you think about it the more you fall in love with it and the more you become sad that you are not sitting in the theater watching the movie right now. It is truly art with one of the best screenplays and some of the best acting of the year and I really hope people go out of their way to check this one out. This movie is more than just a movie, it is a feeling, a passion, a desire, a screaming voice, a painting, a plea for happiness and love that can never exist. I have not felt this way about a movie for years and I know that I will not again for some time.
Overall still other than feeling like there could have been a bit more development early on this film is stunning. By the end, it reaches some of the biggest emotional highs that I have seen from any movie this year and like I said even days after seeing the film it still stays with me. This is a film that haunts you and eats up at you, the more you think about it the more you fall in love with it and the more you become sad that you are not sitting in the theater watching the movie right now. It is truly art with one of the best screenplays and some of the best acting of the year and I really hope people go out of their way to check this one out. This movie is more than just a movie, it is a feeling, a passion, a desire, a screaming voice, a painting, a plea for happiness and love that can never exist. I have not felt this way about a movie for years and I know that I will not again for some time.