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Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019, 122 min.)

Linda DeLibero, Senior Lecturer and Special Advocate for Alumni and Outreach, and Former Director of the JHU Film and Media Studies Program

The rapturous reception that greeted the release of Céline Sciamma’s 2019 Portrait of a Lady on Fire catapulted the 41-year-old director to international stardom and instant recognition as perhaps France’s most important young filmmaker, male or female. Sciamma was already a favorite among admiring critics and cinephiles for her first three features—Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011), and Girlhood (2014)—a trilogy united by their sensitive explorations of underrepresented adolescence in contemporary France. But Portrait, Sciamma’s first story about adults and her first period piece, explored the possibilities of an avowedly feminist narrative with new complexity. Set in a breathtaking seascape in late 18th-century Brittany, the film traces the quietly passionate love that grows between Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a portrait artist, and Héloïse (Adèle Haenele), her initially unwilling subject. Their eventual union becomes a stunningly moving tale of personal liberation and creative collaboration. While all of Sciamma’s films seek to upend traditional, male-centered notions of cinematic storytelling, Portrait explores the power of female desire with such assured complexity and beauty that the end result feels anything but polemical. It is simply a deeply human story of two women who briefly escape the bounds of history, fashioning a tiny ephemeral utopia that leaves behind miraculous art.

$10 fee for guests (No charge for ASG members, ASG subscribers, and RI members)