Portrait of a Lady on Fire (3/5 Stars)

I had fun watching “Portrait of a Lady of Fire”. Perhaps that they may not have been the desired effect of Writer-Director Celine Sciamma and I do not mean to insinuate that the movie is so bad it is good. It is a good movie, well made, poetically composed, and filled with good performances. It just is too serious for a plot that has so little at stake and it moves so slowly and relies so heavily on looks and gazes e to move itself forward that the impatient among us are provoked to add their own comments to fill in the space. If you want to see this movie, you should not see it with me. I talked a lot during it.

The plot can be briefly summarized. A young woman, played by Noemie Merlant, is hired to paint the portrait of another young woman, Adele Haenel. They are both French and the entire movie takes place in a scenic isolated villa on the coast of France. There is lots of wind that blows through their hair, brunette for Noemie, blonde for Adele. Adele has endured a recent tragedy. She has a very French reaction. in full ennui she does nothing every day but walk through gorgeous cinematography looking striking and miserable.

There is a clear subtext in all the gazes between Noemie and Adele. The movie does not outright say it for the first hour of the movie, but they are totally lesbians. There is no one else in this villa but the maid, and every other scene is them looking at each other without talking. These types of pauses that generally lead to sex in most movies seem to happen every five or ten minutes or so. I incorrectly predicted that Noemie and Adele would start making out several times. I’m not going to spoil whether they ever do it…Not! They totally do!

There is a lot of painting in this movie and Celine Sciamma probably did a good job of portraying the process. I don’t know, I don’t know much about painting. However, I do know however when a woman is correctly framed and lit in cinematography. In this regard, Sciamma clearly knows what she is doing. It’s hot. I especially like the scene where the lady was on fire.