Portrait of a Lady on Fire
This movie is so delightfully gay. Honestly, it’s so nice to watch a movie about two women falling in love that doesn’t fetishise women or lesbianism, and doesn’t result in one of them dying or ending up in some horrifying tragedy. Especially a period film! Because for some reason people like to pretend that lesbians didn’t exist before like, 1950, but that’s very much not true at all.
There are barely any men in this film, and honestly that is such a refreshing change from the scores and scores of movies where women are relegated to either their body parts or their function as romantic interests for the male characters, or worse, aren’t there at all. So to be able to watch a movie with four women spending time together, talking, relating, going through female issues together is such a joy and feels like a real game changer when it comes to feminist film-making. Not only does this film pass the Bechdel test, it doesn’t even bother with trying to fulfil the opposite requirements. None of the male characters have names (I’d hardly call them characters) and they certainly don’t talk to each other, and I didn’t even notice till I sat down to write this. The men are not missed.
That’s not only because this is a movie about two women falling in love, but because it’s a movie about women dealing with being women, together. Men don’t need to be in that story. Héloïse, the main love interest, is being married off to a mystery man in Milan that her sister was supposed to be marrying. Her mother is determined to marry off one of her daughters to this man, and Héloïse is the only daughter she has left. The problem is that Héloïse refuses to sit for her portrait, and apparently for some reason she has to have a portrait before she can get married? I don’t know.
Anyway, the mum asks the artist to come and paint her in secret, under the guise of being her companion for walks, because that’s how her sister died, by ‘falling’ off the cliffs on the seaside. Eventually, Héloïse finds out that she’s a painter and not a companion and agrees to sit for her if she’ll start the painting again.
This is when all of the longing looks and charged touches begin, and it’s so delightful to watch. There are so many lovely moments between the two of them, as they get to know each other better and try to navigate their feelings for each other.
In one scene, the artist wakes up in the middle of the night to realise she’s gotten her period. It’s a lovely scene because it’s so normal and real. Rarely is this kind of thing shown on film, so it’s nice to see it represented accurately. She gets up to go find some relief and the maid, the other major character in this film, heats some cherry seeds for her and wraps them in a cloth.
During this scene, we also hear about the maid, Sophie’s, own conflict for the film, her unwanted pregnancy. While discussing this, there’s no mention of the man involved, because again, it’s irrelevant to the story. Sophie doesn’t want to keep the baby, she’s just been waiting for her mistress to leave so she can get an abortion.
This is the other aspect of this movie I love. The accurate portrayal of historical back alley abortions. There are many reasons why women get abortions, but historically a lot of women would have been condemned and their lives ruined (if not ended) if they had no access to abortions. After the procedure, Héloïse is keyed up and doesn’t want to sleep, so she insists that the artist paint what they saw, so as to remember, and they model for her.
There’s a recurring theme in this film about remembering things that are not talked about openly. This definitely applies to their lesbianism, but it also applies to the sister’s suicide, which is only discussed between these three characters. Of course, there’s the abortion, but there’s also the sadness and hopelessness Héloïse feels going into an unknown marriage, something that was so common in this time period. And they leave each other with a promise to remember, encapsulated in paintings.
This really is a beautiful film that highlights so many of the struggles faced by women that people don’t like to talk about, and I think it does a wonderful job of remembering itself. Watch it if you can, it’s an incredible film.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is available to stream on Stan in Australia, Mubi in the UK, and Hulu in the US. It’s available to rent or buy everywhere on YouTube, Google Play or Apple TV, and Amazon Prime in Australia and the UK.
