Portrait of a lady on fire = Portrait de la jeune fille en feu

Author

Céline Sciamma

Call Number

• DVD FOREIGN (CEN, OSH)

Edition

Director-approved DVD special edition.

Languages

In French, with English subtitles.

Performers

Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami, Valeria Golino.

Publication Information

[Irvington, NY] : Criterion Collection, [2020]

Physical Description

1 videodisc (121 minutes) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 folded sheet (color illustrations ; 19 cm.)

Audience

MPAA rating: R; for some nudity and sexuality.

Summary

Passion brews quietly between an artist and her subject, until they together create a space in which it can briefly flourish, in this sumptuous eighteenth-century romance from Céline Sciamma, one of contemporary French cinema's most acclaimed auteurs. Summoned to an isolated seaside estate on a secret assignment, Marianne must find a way to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse, who is resisting chattel marriage, by furtively observing her. What unfolds in exquisite tension is an exchange of sustained gazes in which the two women come to know each other's gestures, expressions, and bodies with rapturous intimacy, ultimately forging a subversive creative collaboration as well as a delirious romance. Charged with a yearning that almost transcends time and space, Portrait of a Lady on Fire mines the emotional and artistic possibilities that emerge when women can freely live together and look at one another in a world without men.

Notes

Originally released as a motion picture in 2019.

Special features: New 4K digital master ; new conversation between director Céline Sciamma and film critic Dana Stevens ; new interviews with actors Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant ; interview with cinematographer Claire Mathon from the 2019 Cannes Film Festival ; interview from 2019 with artist Hélène Delmaire on creating the paintings for the film.