Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a study in longing, a depiction so tender, so delicate you almost expect it to fall apart in your hands. Céline Sciamma achieves this with tremendous amounts of silence, carefully selected music (or lack thereof) and gaze — the last one being crucial to the understanding of the story, rivaled only by the minimalistic use of score. However, I’d argue that even the music asks us to look closer, further enforcing the idea that looking, and seeing, is fundamental.
Across the waters into the fire
“Soft she was, — she was — and gone, burning in water,”
— Anna Hajnal, from Evening Light: Poems, “Dead Girl”
The main character, Marianne, is commissioned to paint a wedding portrait. She knows nothing about the young lady whom she’ll be painting and she sails to a secluded island in Brittany to live with the woman and her mother for the duration of the process.
It’s then that we are first introduced to the duality of water versus fire. Marianne swims in a rowboat across the blue sea and the intense ebbing of the waves causes a crate to fall overboard. She jumps into the water to save the wooden box which we will later learn contains two white canvas. Marianne immerses herself in the sea and then dries by the fire — fire is her domain. It’s visible in the colour scheme as well; she wears a scarlet red dress, scenes in her bedchambers are in warm tones and the hearth is always on. Marianne’s character is intimately tied to fire and therefore could be identified with it.
Before we are introduced to the lady, Héloïse, we first meet her mother, dressed in a dark blue gown resembling the colour of the deep ocean. It’s a colour scheme we’ll associate with both her and her daughter. The countess tells Marianne that there was another painter who attempted the portrait but Héloïse disliked it so much that he was forced to scratch in and leave the island. She refused to pose for anyone else. Marianne will have to paint the portrait in secret, from memory alone. She will accompany Héloïse on her walks by the sea.
The sea is Héloïse’s domain. When Marianne first meets her she only sees a cloaked figure (same deep ocean blue hues) and then she’s out of the mansion, charging towards the shore. Marianne follows her and her eyes do, too, in a curious attempt to memorize her, even if it’s her figure alone. As they near the cliffs Héloïse breaks into a run. Terrified Marianne follows her, fearing that she’s about to make an attempt on her life, like her sister. But then she stops at the very edge of the cliff. The sea crashes against the shores in the background and as Héloïse turns around (!) Marianne sees her for the first time. They see each other for the first time.
Héloïse says, “I’ve dreamt of doing that for years.” Marianne asks, “Dying?” Héloïse corrects her, “Running.” The theme of a dream is important here — it suggests something fleeting, a whim. A dream is not remembrance. A dream doesn’t imprint itself. A dream is not real. It’ll become relevant when they kiss for the second time in Marianne’s bedchambers and Marianne will ask, “Did you dream about me?” but Héloïse will refute it by saying, “I didn’t dream about you, I thought about you.” Somehow thought is more deliberate, more grounding. It’ll also serve us to understand the deconstruction of the Muse which I’ll get to later.
As they look out to the sea they stand shoulder to shoulder. Marianne keeps glancing at Héloïse, trying to memorize her features. There’s no dialogue, only them looking back and forth, Marianne with intent, Héloïse with confusion. As they return, Marianne thinks about the shell of Héloïse’s ear, the swell of her cheeks, how they will define the colour palette. She has to remember her, recall her features as she’s alone in her chambers. She has to visualize her, all of her, and she does. There’s power in gazing, in looking, in seeing. Marianne has only that to rely on.
She discovers the old portrait, the face blurred. A couple of nights later she holds a candle to it, in order to see better and she accidentally sets it on fire. She doesn’t seem to hold much remorse. Marianne just sits there and watches it burn. Watches what she has done — set the fire to Héloïse’s heart.
An invitation to listen
They grow closer. Marianne plays the piano or tries to because it’s out of tune and she doesn’t remember the melody well. All the while Héloïse is looking at her with a smile playing on her lips. It’s the first instance where we hear music so it’s this scene we must pay attention to (and this melody) — it’s Marianne and Héloïse side to side, looking at each other. It’s them and it’s this song, a part of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Summer.
In the second movement a farmer has returned home, after an arduous day of work, tired tries to sleep but a thunderclap in the sky announces a storm that interrupts his dream, this scene repeats itself several times and it is united to the third movement that describes the forces of the nature untied in a terrible storm
Summer is a choice in itself. It’s the most dynamic part of the concerts — it announces a storm and it’s meant to create a sense of inner turmoil, anticipation in unrest. It foreshadows events to come, the tumultuous waves of emotion that overcome Marianne and Héloïse like a storm. It seems powerful and overwhelming but also gentle. We’re waiting for the storm to break and be over while the sea is nothing but still. It’ll accumulate and explode only in the final moments. The entire film is the anticipation of that.
Unraveling
When they’re sitting on a beach and the portrait is finished Marianne finally tells Héloïse she’s a painter and that she’s leaving the next day. Héloïse decides then that it’s time she goes into the water and figures out whether she can swim which is a callback to one of their previous conversations. It seems essential that Héloïse chooses this moment above all else, almost as if there’s no other option. In her mind, Marianne must be present for this moment. Somehow, the choice is influenced by Marianne.
Perhaps it’s Héloïse reminding herself of who she really is — if Marianne is fire then she is water. It’s like she needs to feel that cold, let it soak her to the bone. Why? We learn in the very last shot. She says, “So that’s what all those looks were about.” She was paying attention to Marianne looking, interpreting it for herself, perhaps coming to the realization that she read into it more than she was supposed to. The sheer act of looking was so important that it was noticed by her and thus, is meant to be noticed by the viewer.
Looking shapes the story. If Marianne didn’t look, didn’t have to memorize Héloïse then there would be no story. And Marianne looked and remembered and painted the portrait.
Shedding the expectations of society
“To feel anything deranges you. To be seen feeling anything strips you naked.”
— Anne Carson, Red Doc>
When Héloïse eventually sees the painting she criticizes it for its lack of personality. She’s disappointed in Marianne. “Is it the way you see me?” Is memory faulty? Or was there something Marianne refused to see?
She submitted herself to the convention. She said it, there are ideals she has to follow, techniques. All that is to say she lets herself be shaped by society. She’s shackled as long as she does. Héloïse, as well. Looking shapes the story but turning their backs to society is what progresses it.
The countess personifies society. Marianne painted mainly for her eyes, for her gaze and for the male one.
After Héloïse leaves, Marianne scratches the painting, blurs the face, as with the previous one. It’s interesting, that only the face is blurred. As if it’s what conveys everything, as if that’s where all the secrets lie, all the importance. If the face is obscured, then there’s no feeling, no personality (a reference to Marianne and Héloïse wearing scarves to protect them from the wind — when they kiss for the first time they physically have to pull them down, expose themselves, here’s my face, you see my eyes and my mouth; here’s my honesty.) Only as the countess leaves the expectations of society leave with her. Marianne starts painting another portrait, this time the final one.
Catharsis
It’s in the second act that the film exposes its heart, bares its throat. Without the countess’ presence, both women get closer to each other and to Sophie, the handmaiden. She’s also presented in warm tones, the oranges of her skirt, as well as in whites — purity, innocence. They play cards and eat together. Sophie prepares a sack of warm seeds for Marianne’s period pains. One evening, Héloïse reads aloud a myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
In Greek mythology, Eurydice dies as she flees from a man obsessed with her beauty (her features were so beautiful that everyone who looked at her fell in love) and dies by stepping on a viper. Orpheus, taken with grief, follows his wife to the Underworld and charms everyone with the melody of his lyre and singing. Hades agrees to let Eurydice go under one condition — she is to follow Orpheus and Orpheus must not turn back. They walk together in darkness towards the edges of the earth and then, overcome by sudden fear, Orpheus turns around and catches the last sight of Eurydice before he loses her forever.
The women discuss the myth. Sophie is outraged — I can see myself in her, reading the myth for the first time, unable to understand Orpheus’ motive. But Marianne says his choice was a decision of a poet — he embraces the memory of her, and then he lets her go.
Héloïse, however, proposes it was Eurydice’s choice, after all. Perhaps it was she who said, “turn around.” And he, in love and longing, did.
Marianne and Héloïse’s story goes like a classic Greek tragedy. We know how it goes. They are meant to lose each other from the beginning, perhaps even from the very moment, Héloïse turning around on the cliff’s edge. It’s a framing device, Héloïse turning around then, and later Marianne, as they bid their goodbyes and Héloïse chases after her in her wedding gown (Marianne’s visions — she knew, every time, she’d lose Héloïse). Marianne is almost out of the door. Héloïse says, “Turn around.” (We all know how the myth goes.) Marianne turns. Looks. And Héloïse plunges into darkness.
Witnessing womanhood
It all circles back to the act of looking. Héloïse gazing at Marianne above the bonfire (her dress catching on fire and Héloïse regarding it calmly, almost peacefully, the same way Marianne did with the portrait; she seems to welcome the fire and it’s in this moment she accepts her feelings for Marianne; the next scene is them going down the cliffs and kissing for the first time.) It’s also during the bonfire scene that we hear music for the second time — it’s all the women gathered to sing.
It’s a chilling sound of many voices coming together, forming a choir. It says, here, look at me, listen to me, pay attention to me. It’s the second theme of the film, as important as Marianne and Héloïse’s relationship. Music demands for us to take notice. It urges us to look at all the women gathered and makes us realize it’s about their shared womanhood. We never learn why those women come together but we don’t question it — perhaps they all need each other’s warmth and each other’s voices and each other’s song. They sing the Latin words of fugere non possum which means I cannot run away. At the very end, they recite a passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, et amplius non oriri et parva videntur esse, qui neque volare possit (roughly translated to the higher we go, the smaller we look to those who cannot fly.)
It’s almost as if they find refuge in singing and in the bonfire and in each other. The shared condition of being a woman within the boundaries of society.
Sophie gets an abortion and both Marianne and Héloïse go with her. Marianne turns away but Héloïse tells her to look. It’s almost like in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) directed by George Miller. It’s the saying of the War Boys, “Witness me.” They can sacrifice themselves but someone has to look. The action gains significance, importance. Both moments, in Portrait and Mad Max, are defined by the act of looking.
And I think the last testament to gazing as remembrance is Marianne and Héloïse’s last night together. They face each other in bed, bathed in the warmth of the fireplace. Marianne tells Héloïse not to fall asleep. Those are their last moments together. They memorize each other’s faces. The longer they look, the more they’ll remember.
Dismantling the myth
“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”— Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (translated by Anne Carson)
There’s a choice in looking. Upon watching the film for the first time I didn’t even consider it as a lens of interpretation because it seemed like a rather passive action. And yet in Portrait, you make yourself a participant to the events by looking. You move from being a passive voice to an active one. In an interview, Céline mentioned that it’s a film about dismantling the myth of the Muse — not objectifying her but instead making her partake, giving her a voice, allowing her to think (“I didn’t dream about you, I thought about you.”) Marianne paints Héloïse and she mentions all the ways in which she sees her but then she’s surprised to find out that Héloïse sees her, too. It’s a collaboration between the muse and the artist. The creation cannot exist without the mutual understanding of the two parties. That’s what the first portrait lacked — Héloïse was unaware of the situation and Marianne was a passive looker. She committed Héloïse’s features to memory but she did so without feeling. She treated Héloïse as an object. She presented her to the eyes of the society, to the male gaze. And there, she failed.
In the same interview, Céline also said, I try to make films that talk about the future. I try to make a film with the dynamic of love that says — I love you, is always something you say in the future. it’s always something that has a future. And Portrait, unlike the myth of Oedipus and Eurydice, continues after turn around and the plunge into darkness. There’s the art exhibition and Marianne’s painting of the myth, “It’s like they’re saying goodbye to each other,” says one of the attendees. (Again, them losing each other almost like a choice.)
Among the paintings, Marianne is stunned to find a portrait of Héloïse with her daughter, and on Héloïse’s lap, the book held open to show the infamous page 28 where Marianne was asked to draw her portrait. It’s saying to Marianne, this entire picture exists for you; it’s for your eyes to see. It’s saying, I remember you, as well.
In that scene, Marianne is also wearing blue gowns. In all sequences after their parting, Marianne changes her wardrobe into shades of blue; almost as if to commemorate Héloïse who was water, who was the sea.
And the last scene, the gutting, heart-wrenching opera scene with the recurring theme of Vivaldi’s Summer. Again, Marianne is the one who sees Héloïse. Héloïse doesn’t notice her. We return to the very beginning when Marianne was the only one looking, or perhaps all this time Héloïse was looking at something else, something which had its culmination in the erratic instrumentals of Summer. Perhaps, if Héloïse saw Marianne, this story would’ve continued differently. Because it is only through the act of the shared looking, of togetherness, that the story progresses and evolves and fills up with love. As long as Marianne was the only one looking, she doesn’t go to Héloïse. She wouldn’t make this decision alone. And since looking is the highest form of experiencing, perhaps seeing Héloïse there, across the entire opera hall, across space and lights and music and time — it was enough. The act of looking, and allowing yourself to look, was enough.
