Portrait of a Lady on Fire
BFI #30
Rent/Purchase
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
What critics thought
Céline Sciamma's period romance has earned near-universal admiration for its rigorously controlled filmmaking and the way it thinks through the act of looking itself — how desire, artistic creation, and memory are entangled in the gaze between painter and subject. Critics zeroed in on the film's intellectual architecture as much as its emotional power, and its reputation has only grown since release, now placed among the greatest films ever made.
“subtle and thrilling love story, at once unsentimental in its realistic assessment of women's circumstances”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“an intellectually erotic study of power and passion in which observed becomes observer, authored becomes author, returning time and again to a central question: 'If you look at me, who do I look at?”
Mark Kermode·The Observer/The Guardian
“Though this gorgeous, slow-burn lesbian romance works strongly enough on a surface level, one can hardly ignore the fact, as true then as it is now, that the world looks different when seen through a woman's eyes”
Peter Debruge·Variety
“the entanglements between artistic creation and burgeoning love, between memory and ambition and freedom. The film is about the erotic, electric connection between women when they find their desire for creative experience fulfilled in each other, but it is equally about the powers of art to validate, preserve, and console after a romance is over”
Rachel Syme·The New Yorker
Genres
Drama, Romance
Cast & Crew
DirectorCéline Sciamma
StarringNoémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami, Valeria Golino, Christel Baras
ComposerArthur Simonini, Para One
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
BFI #30
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
What critics thought
Céline Sciamma's period romance has earned near-universal admiration for its rigorously controlled filmmaking and the way it thinks through the act of looking itself — how desire, artistic creation, and memory are entangled in the gaze between painter and subject. Critics zeroed in on the film's intellectual architecture as much as its emotional power, and its reputation has only grown since release, now placed among the greatest films ever made.
“subtle and thrilling love story, at once unsentimental in its realistic assessment of women's circumstances”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“an intellectually erotic study of power and passion in which observed becomes observer, authored becomes author, returning time and again to a central question: 'If you look at me, who do I look at?”
Mark Kermode·The Observer/The Guardian
“Though this gorgeous, slow-burn lesbian romance works strongly enough on a surface level, one can hardly ignore the fact, as true then as it is now, that the world looks different when seen through a woman's eyes”
Peter Debruge·Variety
“the entanglements between artistic creation and burgeoning love, between memory and ambition and freedom. The film is about the erotic, electric connection between women when they find their desire for creative experience fulfilled in each other, but it is equally about the powers of art to validate, preserve, and console after a romance is over”
Rachel Syme·The New Yorker
Genres
Drama, Romance
Cast & Crew
DirectorCéline Sciamma
StarringNoémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami, Valeria Golino, Christel Baras
ComposerArthur Simonini, Para One
Rent/Purchase