All the fires the fire
“But I was very angry”: on the female gaze in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, on anger as a feminist resource
I first started thinking about this essay one year ago, before Covid was on our radar, before 2020 deflagrated on us in every way possible. Since then, it has taken many forms, losing and gaining some of its parts as time went by and my ideas shifted. As I try to wrap it up along with this year, I’m not too sure of what it has become: a meditation on a film, a summary of my year of non-writing, a guide to recognising my saints. One of the first scenes in Pablo Larraín’s Ema sees a person operate a flame thrower through a deserted street. That is the spirit in which this was written.
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On March 8th 2019 — International Women’s Day — I am tired and angry; so tired and so angry that I, ever the Millennial, write a full-fledged Facebook rant while on the bus. What’s the point of all this, the gist of it is, why carry on with all the activism, when it constantly feels like we are fighting the hydra? To go with it, Agnès Varda’s famous “I tried to be a joyful feminist, but I was very angry” film still, patron saint of all angry feminists.
There are likes and shares, references to that rant, words of encouragement and solidarity. I am tired and angry, but for once I’m not alone.
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I first watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire in the autumn of 2019. I am spellbound by its story, cinematography and pace, mesmerised by the scene at the feast (or is it a witches’ sabbath? I’d like to think it is), by the women’s hypnotic singing. On leaving the cinema, I know I want to write about it, about one scene in particular, but I’m missing a structure. I make some notes, tweet about it as a way to preserve that first impression, check if it has resonated with others, too.
The film — the idea of writing about it — takes hold. I am barefoot in the warmth of my parents’ bathroom a few days before Christmas when a thought suddenly occurs: not a thought, a connection, and then another one. It makes sense to me. I let it sediment.
Since then, I watch it three more times: by myself on a Valentine’s Day special preview in a screen filled with couples, at a swanky Mayfair cinema with impressive marble toilets, and sitting on my bed, courtesy of Mubi. The rewatches are strategic, a reconnaissance of sorts. I need to make notes, double-check things, remind myself of them. But they are anxious viewings, too: what if the details are not as I remember them? What if I magnified something that isn’t really all that important? And most of all, what if, by rewatching it, the charm and impact of the film will wear off?
I begin to draft sentences in my notebook; when I sit at my computer, not a single word comes out.
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Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a film about looking, about showing what’s not being said.
To watch it is to become enraptured in Claire Mathon’s painterly cinematography: the exquisitely framed images of Héloïse on the shore, surrounded by the cliffs; the candle-lit interior scenes around the kitchen table, goreless reminders of Artemisia Gentileschi’s chiaroscuros. It is clear that the visual aspect of the film has been thought through in every painstaking detail, but also — and more importantly — that most of its secondary narratives are mainly told through a visual form of storytelling.
Consider the costumes: Héloïse’s dress is made of the same blue fabric as her mother’s one. Her cape is also blue, a colour that speaks of nobility and sainthood. By contrast, Marianne’s brown and reddish garments signify not only a difference in status, but also, perhaps, a different attitude to life, and a stronger connection to its earthly aspects.
Crucially, though, Marianne’s brick-red dress matches the green silk gown Héloïse wears for her portrait. In picking these two complementary colours, the costume designer made the deliberate choice of suggesting the same of Marianne and Héloïse: as per colour theory, complementary colours are opposites that produce the highest luminosity, but can never mix. It is notable that the embraces they share while wearing these specific hues follow arguments, or the realisation of their inevitable separation. It is equally significant that Marianne will only be seen wearing yellow- or blue-toned gowns and capes after their farewell.
Marianne’s reds and Héloïse’s blues become once again noteworthy when combined with Sophie’s ochre-toned dress: together, they nod to the three primary colours, with their costumes shown in full in the scenes where their literal and emotional proximity is at its highest, namely when Héloïse and Marianne help the maid procure an abortion, first by helping her gather the herbs needed to prepare a concoction to induce a miscarriage, later by accompanying her to the feast and then to the abortionist’s house.
Their three silhouettes walking together at twilights, as well as the colour-coded costumes, speak essentially of a kinship that, by virtue of its visual form of expression, we accept almost unconsciously. It is a closeness and mutuality that transcends class or social norms: when Sophie stumbles while running back and forth from Marianne to Héloïse, the latter extends her hand to help her up. Sophie hesitates a moment before accepting: just a few days earlier, in the presence of Héloïse’s mother, such a gesture would have been unfathomable. Here, it tells of their undoing of norms (in another scene, Héloïse and Marianne cook while Sophie is seated, embroidering) and of their equality (the same equality Héloïse muses about when referring to her days at the convent). And, on a higher level, they are equal, for they are all fighting a different battle against patriarchy: Héloïse by refusing to be portrayed in an attempt to escape marriage, Marianne by living on her own terms and using her father’s name as a way to paint what she really wishes to, and Sophie by reassessing her control over her body, a decision she takes entirely by herself.
All these stories are told through images. This choice is aided by the tempo of the film, a slow pace that offers viewers room to breathe and read between the lines, noticing everything that is implicit or unsaid. In doing so, Portrait of a Lady On Fire nods to the centuries-long tradition that sees women’s stories passed on almost in secret, on the margins, in lemon ink — but by being in essence a feminist film, it also gives us enough tools to decipher them.
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This is where I stop. There is so much more to my reflections, so many more words roiling in my head. I outline sentences while I shower or drift to sleep, pound pavements as I think of the rhythm of their structure. I am reminded of the scene in 20000 Days on Earth where Nick Cave says of his days, “ I wake, I write, I eat, I write, I watch TV”; I yearn for that. Instead, all I do is think about writing, but when I get down to it, all the words dissipate, desert me.
Then Europe starts going into lockdown, into panic mode, and all my thoughts on writing are reduced to embers.
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Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is a film about looking. Its architecture is woven around a multiplicity of looks, and the consequences they have.
The gaze and its devastating potential present themselves via the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a story that runs parallel to that of Marianne and Héloïse and serves as its mirror, its precedent. From their conversations about it, to Marianne’s visions of Héloïse in her wedding dress, to their farewell — Héloïse beckoning Marianne, daring her to turn around — the myth is inextricable from the film, calling attention to the smoldering looks the two exchange, the fatality of a single gaze.
One of the looks the film is centred on, or at least the one that sets it in motion, is Marianne’s, who steals glances at Héloïse in order paint her portrait: she tries to catch her off guard, notes the structure of her face or the way she folds her hands, memorising every detail. Her gazing and attention are those of an artist, but their intensity resembles — and later becomes — that of a lover.
What is remarkable about Marianne’s look is its evolution from a male to a female gaze. When she first arrives, she is instructed to paint a portrait of Héloïse to be received by a suitor, and to paint it in secret. For her painting to please Héloïse’s potential husband (the marriage will only go ahead if he likes the painting), Marianne is to adopt a look akin to that of a man. Moreover, by assembling the portrait from stolen glances and memorised details, Marianne’s gaze mimics that of a voyeur, which serves, perhaps unwittingly, to make her see Héloïse more as a sum of parts than as a whole, and in turn blinds her to her own complicity. Her internalisation of the male gaze is evident in the scene that sparks a confrontation between the two: her comment on how the painting will be the object “through which [she] will give [Héloïse] to another” metaphorically places her on the same level as Héloïse’s future husband.
However, Marianne is not the only beholder, as Héloïse reveals that she reciprocates the painter’s looking. “If you look at me, then who do I look at?”, she asks, stating that her look is equal, and equally attentive. In doing so, Héloïse subverts not only the power dynamics between Marianne and herself, but also the centuries of art history that see models as mere objects of the artist’s gaze, one that is unquestionable and unidirectional. And the mutuality of their looking, as well as that particular exchange, reflects the gaze that permeates the film and makes it manifest, a female gaze that is neither voyeuristic nor exploitative. This can especially be noticed in the scene where Marianne sketches a portrait of Héloïse she intends to keep as well as a self-portrait to give her. Inserted within the context of an intimate scene, their exchange feels like one between equals, both naked and vulnerable to the other’s gaze, both willing to be looked at.
Héloïse’s subversion of the male gaze as well as of traditional, male-dominated art history is also evident during the abortion scene and its aftermath. While Marianne averts her eyes, she watches everything, and instructs her to look too; later, she will recreate the scene at home and ask Marianne to paint it. In doing so, Héloïse (and, by extension, the film) bears witness to a crucial event in a woman’s life — one that is often left unspoken or considered a taboo — and understands not only the importance of watching it as it happens in order to remember it, but also to immortalise it so that it will be passed onto future generations, preserving womxn’s stories and lived experiences from a male-centric writing — or erasure — of history.
Finally, there is one more gaze: ours, extradiegetic and possibly unnecessary. And there is a sort of insouciance about our irrelevance that I find extremely refreshing.
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I am still thinking about writing, still unable to do so. I pull all the tricks I resort to in these situations: I post about it on social media, talk to friends who will listen, advise, and gently prod me when it’s needed. I go majorly out of my way to get a pair of shoes I really want, and tell myself I can only wear them after I’m done with this. It doesn’t work (who needs shoes during lockdown?). Nothing does.
As weeks turn to months, I feel I’ve missed my cue. I went back and forth about it for too long, and now the film is gone; there are more important things to think about, bigger things to get angry at. It is simply not the time.
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Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a film about rage — rage as a fuel, rage as the last or only resort.
When we first meet her, Héloïse is not sad or dejected. She is angry — at her sister, at her mother, at her circumstances. Later, she will also be angry at Marianne, for being complicit, for not understanding. And even after she finally agrees to sit for the painting, it is her rage, once again, that thwarts the process, seeping through her eyes, her expression. “Anger always comes to the fore,” she says as Marianne comments on her expression and her own inability to make her smile. But Héloïse has every right to be mad, and she knows, and Marianne knows, and we know too.
“Anger always comes to the fore”. Whilst that line may have been intended literally, it made me jolt in my seat when I watched the film for the first time. I had been completely engrossed in the story until then, but out of the entirety of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, this was the scene that spoke to me, made me feel not just — gawd, I’m about to say it — seen, but understood, too. Justified.
I felt similarly while watching Morgan Lloyd Malcom’s Emilia, who in her final monologue talks of a rage so ancestral and pervasive it has become muscle memory. It was the same when I read Mariana Enríquez’s short story Things We Lost in the Fire, where women escape the violence of their male partners, ex-boyfriends or spurned lovers by jumping in the fire first, scarring themselves before anyone else has the chance to: their rage is greater than anything, it’s what sustains them against desperation.
It always ends up being fire somehow, two sides of the same coin: the stake as a constant threat, the bonfire that is either a place for congregation or a Rubicon to cross, the anger that burns through everything, implacable.
Anger — female anger, like other subaltern angers — is hidden in plain sight. It laces the conversations I have with my friends, it seeps into the wider discourse, sometimes makes it into a book or a film. But it always does so in secret; female anger should not exist, or, at the very least, should not be displayed. Most of all, it should not be acknowledged; it needs to be kept in the same realm as lunacy. That’s why any outburst you come across is usually framed by an apology — “Sorry about this rant”, “Sorry, I had to let it off my chest”, “Sorry, is it just me?” — regardless of the situation. Because manifesting anger is almost empowering, and therefore antithetical to everything that’s considered feminine in a system that benefits from stifling that rage and gaslighting its carrier. That’s why seeing it on screen — incandescent, uncompromising — was exhilarating.
But while that empowerment — that rush — might keep you going for a while, being angry all the time is exhausting. And being publicly angry is oftentimes suicidal, metaphorically speaking: you will be the office hysteric, the friend who can’t be invited to parties, the niece who’s guaranteed to spoil Christmas dinner. You will be unreasonable, and impossible to talk to. You will be left alone. And that is the point. It is too big a battle to fight alone, too tiresome, too relentless.
And yet, giving up that battle — turning off the rage switch — is a privilege I’m not privy to. When I talk about it with a friend, also angry, also tired, we wonder what could be done with all our rage. What could be achieved by channeling all this energy, turning it into something, onto something. It’s exactly why we’re told that our anger must be silenced. And so it sits at the bottom of our guts, burning from within.
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On the night of the Césars, Adèle Haenel storms out of the ceremony, outraged at Polański’s accolades. Many of us recognise the sentiment, the I’ve fucking had it moment; it’s a fury so large that what’s at stake no longer matters.
Anger always comes to the fore. The fire of the film she is there to represent is her own too, her rage transcends her character, becomes absolutely real and impossible to ignore. Virginie Despentes understands that anger and shares it, encapsulates it into a searing editorial. And as I read her words — “we get up and we get out” — I know that they are seminal, just as Emilia’s were (“that anger that you feel, it is yours and you can use it”), just as Varda’s were.
Throughout the year, my private little anger-fest (at incompetence, at the government, at patriarchy) is dwarfed in the face of rages much older, more urgent, more righteous. But at the same time, all sorts of angers — private or public or explosive or silent — become manifest to me, as if I’d held out a flame to all that lemon ink, as if, by acknowledging my own, I had become attuned to the rage that pervades those around me. It’s in the films I watch, in random quotes by famous authors I come across. It’s in the books I read and the signs in the windows I walk past everyday; it’s on Instagram, it’s everywhere.
After years when I’ve often felt powerless, I find solace in that company of sorts; in knowing that as long as I’m angry, the fight isn’t out of me yet; in trusting there is someone else out there who’s as angry as I am, all our angers incendiary, all our fires a fire.
