5-star ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ is an instantly iconic work of queer romantic cinema

Last weekend's Oscar ceremony with rife with performative feminism and corporate self-flagellation, empty acts of atonement from the Academy to compensate for not nominating more films created by women. In one of the ceremony’s most obnoxious moments, actresses Brie Larson, Gal Gadot and Sigourney Weaver, who have played superheroes on screen, were brought on stage to declare all women superheroes in a year when the Academy nominated none of them for directing Oscars, despite so many deserving the honor.

That’s relevant to French director Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” for the obvious reason: despite its brilliance and Cannes Film Festival win for best screenplay and nomination for the top prize, the Palme d’Or, “Portrait” wasn’t nominated for a single Oscar. But it’s also relevant to the substance of a film exploring the boundaries of female self-actualization — in love and art — in a world that erects so many boundaries around it.

Artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is summoned to a remote corner of Brittany, France to paint an unusual commission: a portrait composed in secret. Beautiful Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) is promised to marry a Milanese nobleman. Her sister, who was his original betrothed, chose suicide over forced matrimony. Héloïse has chosen to live, however unhappily. She will not, however, consent to sit for the wedding portrait required to seal the deal.

In desperation, Héloïse’s mother alights upon a tricky solution, keeping the painter’s profession a secret and posing her as Héloïse’s new companion. Marianne is to accompany Héloïse throughout the day, trailing her as she broods on the cliffs and making sure she doesn’t fling herself from them. Secretly, she is to observe, committing to memory Héloïse’s features and mannerisms to recreate on canvas at night.

A thing observed, of course, is a thing transformed, and Héloïse cannot be stared at so intensely for so long without becoming adored. Héloïse, too, is staring back. Soon, the gig is up, and Héloïse consents to sit for a proper portrait. Marianne and Héloïse fall fast and hard into each other’s embrace, plunging into a romance they know has a time limit — which is exactly as long as it takes to finish a portrait. In a time when marriage is a political and business proposition and queer love is afforded no legitimacy, there can only be one ending. For all the story’s inevitability, that ending, as Sciamma shoots it, is breathtaking — literally, bodily.

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The portrait is a clever, devastating conceit for a necessarily doomed but no less soul-stirring romance. The craft on display is exquisite. Haenel and Merlant deliver rich performances that capture the full range of human emotion as one falls in and must let go of love; in one scene, that rise and fall plays out in the span of mere minutes without any dialogue, using only body language to speak volumes. It’s just as stunning visually, the film’s compositions as careful and considered as a painting’s.

It’s a film that gets brilliantly to the truth of how and why we fall in love, and replicates that sensation — and the heartache that follows. Sciamma’s queer, female gaze imbues it all with an authenticity that’s more valuable to the evolution of cinema than all the empty platitudes to the power of women at all the awards shows in all the world.

“Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” Héloïse asks, having fallen in love. So have we. Love stories are as old as stories themselves, but “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” feels very much like it’s inventing something.

‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire,’ 5 stars

Director: Céline Sciamma.

Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami.

Rating: R for some nudity and sexuality.

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★