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PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
Part of Staff Picks and programmed by Quinn, who says: “This sapphic modern classic burnt a hole through my brain the first time I saw it in February 2020, and I left the theater forever changed. It’s my rainy day movie, my desert island movie, and a staggering masterpiece from start to finish.”
Passion brews quietly between an artist and her subject — until together they create a space in which it can briefly flourish — in this sumptuous 18th-century romance from Céline Sciamma, one of contemporary French cinema’s most acclaimed auteurs. Summoned to an isolated seaside estate on a secret assignment, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) must find a way to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who is resisting chattel marriage, by furtively observing her. What unfolds in exquisite tension is an exchange of sustained gazes in which the two women come to know each other’s gestures, expressions and bodies with rapturous intimacy — ultimately forging a subversive creative collaboration as well as a delirious romance. Charged with a yearning that almost transcends time and space, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE mines the emotional and artistic possibilities that emerge when women can freely live together and see one another in a world without men. “PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE is that rare movie in which every choice feels thought through, meaningful, and right…. Minimal but perfect, without an image, a glance, or a brushstroke to spare.” —Dana Stevens, Slate
“A subtle and thrilling love story, at once unsentimental in its realistic assessment of women’s circumstances and almost utopian in its celebration of the freedom that is nonetheless available to them.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times
“PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE — the fire is figurative, but also real — goes beyond painterly beauty. It sees into souls.” —Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
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