Portraits and Poet’s Choices: Women Loving Women on the Big Screen
Are things that we know won’t last still worth doing? Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady On Fire celebrates the fleeting.
In my final term of university, I settled in to write an essay on Celine Sciamma’s 2019 masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, for a class I was taking on francophone cinema. Like many undergrad essays on such films, it involved something about the subversion of the male gaze, the profundity of the Orpheus and Eurydice metaphor, et cetera. While it’s true that the film does indeed do all of that and more, and I could talk for an ungodly amount of time about how Sciamma does so masterfully, that’s not what I want to discuss here. Instead, I want to tell you about what this film meant to me.
For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a brief overview: Portrait tells the story of a young painter named Marianne, who is hired to paint the portrait of a young woman — Heloise — who is being married off to a faceless Italian man. Heloise does not want the marriage, and therefore refuses to sit for her portrait. Under the guise of a walking companion, Marianne observes Heloise during their day-to-day encounters and begins to paint her without her knowledge. The two grow closer as time goes on, and tumble into a romance that, unfortunately, is star-crossed from the start.
Portrait was the first of Sciamma’s films that I’d ever watched. It has stuck with me ever since, for more than one reason. The flawless narrative, the gorgeous scenery, certainly. But more so, what makes it close to me is the fact that this was the first time, to my memory, that I’d seen a story about women so unconditionally loving other women — romantically, but platonically as well. More than that, they love each other knowing fate isn’t going to tip in their favor.
I was twenty-one years old when I first saw Portrait, and it was one of the first times I saw women loving other women on screen in a way I recognized. In a way in which I could see myself reflected. I said earlier that I didn’t want this to be an analysis, and it won’t be. But it’s impossible to divorce my love for the depiction of their relationship from the concept of the “male gaze” — or the lack thereof, in this context.
“If you look at me, who do I look at? When you don’t know what to say, you touch your forehead. When you lose control, you raise your eyebrows. And when you’re troubled, you breathe through your mouth.”
Marianne and Heloise’s relationship is built on gazes…but not the objectifying kind. It is a mutual gaze — one that starts as wary observation, and then expands and expands until it goes far beyond the physical. It is like this that they gradually come to know each other, and eventually to love each other. Their relationship is a beautifully slow-burning one, and it almost makes you forget that it has to come to an end (but more on that later). To me, the way their story was constructed felt real.
This is a film about women simply existing, living, and loving alongside one another, on the platonic level as well as the romantic. We see Marianne, Heloise, and their maid Sophie playing cards together. Having quiet meals together. Reading to one another. The two lovers even accompany Sophie through the process of getting an abortion — a heavy, but necessary show of solidarity between them that I think is so often shied away from in stories on the screen. There is a bond between the three of them that transcends boundaries of class and conventions that society would have exercised over them elsewhere. The idea of that sort of reprieve — a temporary shelter from the fast-approaching future and the expectations that came with it, where I could do and live and love as I pleased — was and still is painfully appealing to me.
Although they don’t eclipse the story entirely, the constraints on women of that time still tick closer and closer throughout the film. We know that Heloise’s arranged marriage gets closer by the day, and therefore her time with her new lover is limited. We know that Sophie’s abortion, and Heloise and Marianne’s support of her throughout it, would never be tolerated were they to be caught. All three of the characters know these things as well. This knowledge makes the little acts of love in this film that much more profound. They feel like acts of rebellion — perhaps because, even by today’s standards, they are. In choosing this — making the most of their fleeting freedom to create a lasting memory — they make “not the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.”
That, more than anything, is what struck a chord with me — the idea of following through with something for what it gives you in the moment, even when you know it won’t matter in the end. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is something that I struggle with immensely. I constantly feel as though I’m losing time. Anything that isn’t going to last, or that is going to hurt me, or isn’t going to benefit me in the long run…well, is it really worth doing? But Sciamma drives the point home — yes, it is. Because things like these do last. Maybe not in the way you want them to. But they do.
In their final night together, Heloise tells Marianne that she is feeling something new. That something is regret. Regret for what we can infer is allowing herself to fall in love knowing that the ending she wants can never be. Marianne responds that she mustn’t regret. She must remember the time they had together, because all of those little moments mattered. Because as cliché as it may sound, there is nothing to regret about time spent with the people and things you love. Because, however fleeting, time spent in that sort of contentment is never time wasted.
By Kathryn Raver
