Episode 1—Portrait of a Lady on Fire: A Manifesto of the Female Gaze
“I love a movie that I can dig into, chew on… that makes me feel in awe of something. I want to experience something beautiful and new and challenging and transformative.”
Noémie Merlant as Marianne (left), Adèle Haenel as Héloïse (center), and Luàna Bajrami as Sophie (right) discussing the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. (Lilies Films/Pyramide Films)
“Can we think of this film as a spiritual, queer, female gaze Titanic?”
In our inaugural episode, we discuss Annee’s favorite movie of 2020: Céline Sciamma’s French masterpiece on the transformative power of love, Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
The sisters discuss Sciamma’s self-proclaimed ‘manifesto of the female gaze’, break down their favorite elements of the film (cinematography, sound, screenplay, etc.), and develop a tragically romantic connection between this 2019 French period lesbian drama and a familiar 1997 American box office smash.
Show Notes
Film Synopsis
Set in 1770 on a secluded island off the coast of Brittany in France, the story follows Marianne, a painter commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse. At the behest of her mother, Héloïse finds herself reluctantly betrothed to her deceased sister’s former fiancee and refuses to sit for the portrait. Marianne must paint Héloïse without her knowing, so she observes her by day and paints her by night from memory. Intimacy, attraction, and love blossom between the two as they share Héloïse’s first and, in many ways, final days of freedom. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, directed and written by Céline Sciamma, starring Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, and Luàna Bajrami.
References
Interview with Céline Sciamma, Adèle Haenel, & Noémie Merlant, Vulture
The Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Ghostbusters (2016) & Ocean’s 8 (2018)
The Lighthouse (2019)
Inside Para One and Arthur Simonini’s Score, Slate
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
"Summer" sonnet from “The Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi
Titanic (1997)
Recommendations
Jessee: Guerilla Girls & Baumgartner Restoration
Frankee: In the Mood for Love (2000)
Annee: Ovid’s Metamorphoses (tr. David Raeburn) & Madeline Miller’s novels The Song of Achilles and Circe
