Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Céline Sciamma
Part of

57th New York Film Festival

September 27 - October 13, 2019

On the cusp of the 19th century, young painter Marianne travels to a rugged, rocky island off the coast of Brittany to create a wedding portrait of the wealthy yet free-spirited Héloise. An emotional and erotic bond develops between the women in Céline Sciamma’s Cannes-awarded subversion of the story of an artist and “his” muse.

DIRECTOR
Céline Sciamma
YEAR
2019
COUNTRY
France
RUNTIME
121 minutes
LANGUAGE
Subtitled

Q&As with Céline Sciamma, Adèle Haenel, and Noémie Merlant on Sept. 29 & 30

On the cusp of the 19th century, young painter Marianne travels to a rugged, rocky island off the coast of Brittany. Here, she has been commissioned to create a wedding portrait of the wealthy yet free-spirited Héloise, whose hand in marriage has been promised to a man she’s never met. Resentful of the forced union, Héloise at first refuses to be painted, yet a growing bond—at first emotional and then erotic—develops between the women, exquisitely etched by Noémie Merlant as the artist and Adèle Haenel as her initially reluctant muse. With a visual precision as delicate as that of Merlant’s Marianne—whose patient acts of creation are lovingly dwelt upon—Céline Sciamma classically builds her double portrait from tentative romance to melodramatic rapture to a quietly devastating ending, all while subverting the traditional story of an artist and “his” muse. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A NEON release.

Special thanks to UniFrance.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

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