Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a gentle and sweeping romantic drama that lacks the tension and palpable energy to classify it as a masterpiece. Take the dramatic prowess of Barry Jenkins's Moonlight and the stoic pacing of Olivier Assayas's Personal Shopper and what you have is Sciamma’s critically acclaimed drama.
Sciamma’s film is gorgeously shot by cinematographer Claire Mathon, who captures the utterly magnificent setting of the island Brittany in the 18th century. The visuals are stunning, capturing the contextual loneliness and isolation, sweeping and engulfing the characters of the film in an expert manner of seduction and violation of their spirits. The production design by Thomas Grézaud is also masterful at evoking feelings and mood through space and colour, specifically through the art of Noémie Merlant's character Marianne and her indulgent and richness with her artistry that reflects her personality.
The score, or lack thereof, from Jean-Baptiste de Laubier and Arthur Simonini, adds an immense amount of thematic pressure to proceedings. It is quaint and brooding, offering a sizeable impact of when it is finally utilised in more or less a euphoric, tantalising moment of relief when the emotional symphony hits a crescendo. Reflective once again of the feelings the characters process through this emotionally antagonising feature.
The problems arise with the films central chemistry between Merlant's Marianne and Adèle Haenel's Héloïse. There is not any to be found. It partly comes down to Céline Sciamma's screenplay and the lacking charisma of both lead actresses, issues that go hand in hand. The screenplay is light at the best of times, showcasing no real development of repression or societal prejudice — aside from unpassionate lust — and while it adds to the energy and anticipation on paper, on screen it slowly builds a void of nothingness. Ultimately, this creates uneventful sequences that do nothing but add to the already elongated running time of just over one hundred twenty minutes.
It does not particularly help that the two actresses seemingly have no chemistry or depth afforded to them to craft an authentic or believable relationship that is based on love and not one-note lust, an element that gets even more disappointing regarding the screenplay when, in fact, the two leads are ex-lovers in real life. Instead of crucial moments of an arc befallen to them, the two actresses are left to visually ponder each other in a mute existential crisis. The leads, due to their tremendous talent or presumably real-life dynamic, manage to keep the film afloat through evoking emotion throughout nothingness, restraint rather than overindulging and dramatic intensity.
The film turns head in the last act, where a somewhat haunted ghost story begins to develop but is convicted in more or less reduced and undernourished circumstances than the desired impact of guilt and trauma. If anything, Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire has a terrific and outstanding arc involving the supporting character of Luàna Bajrami's Sophie, a house maiden struck by another form of falsely projected womanhood in this era of expectation. This small arc is delicately produced, adding a tragic but also a warm dynamic of the society that surrounds her with strong women. The film also ends on a beautifully profound sentiment of silence that is deafening on screen. The pain and anguish it provokes from this relationship are genuinely haunting and traumatic but alas, reminds the viewer of the film this could have been.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is released February 28th 2020 in the U.K.
