The portrayal of lesbians in mainstream cinema tends to involve prosthetic vaginas and gratuitous sex scenes; so Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire comes as a breath of fresh air. It is the story of the burgeoning relationship between two young women – emancipated artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who is commissioned to paint a portrait of sexually repressed Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), leading to a heated romance.
On paper, it looks like the classic lesbian cinematic narrative – there is a buildup of tension, they finally kiss, and then their possibility of a future together seems doomed. However, what makes Portrait of a Lady on Fire different is its heightened self-awareness. The film is constructed with lesbian representation in mind through careful interrogation of the lesbian gaze. There is a lot of looking. Marianne looks at Héloïse because she has to secretly paint her, and Héloïse looks at Marianne out of curiosity. Eventually, there is a shift in the way they start looking at each other – out of desire.
This is in sharp contrast with the best-known depictions of lesbian sex in films; in films such as Blue Is the Warmest Colour and Cruel Intentions, the male gaze has been dominant. In these films, lesbian intimacy is about touching; Sciamma, however, draws attention to how the women in the film look at each other, and the viewer is made aware of the complexity of lesbian intimacy and how sensuality is located far deeper. As Marianne has to paint Héloïse in secret, there are lingering closeups – particularly on her ear. The intimacy builds from afar, from the gaze.
What’s more, Marianne is the only person Héloïse believes can represent her “as she is”; and the gaze is therefore inextricably linked to representation. The fact that Héloïse allows Marianne to paint her is a big deal: for her, the painting will lead to marriage and is the first step towards an unhappy future of surveillance and censorship. It shows how, if she must be represented as an artwork, she will only accept being painted by someone who understands her, and whom she is intimate with.
Unlike Héloïse, Marianne has total control over how she is represented and seen by others. The film opens with Marianne being painted by her students, and although she is the one sitting and posing, she is issuing instructions on how she should be portrayed. Her status as an artist enables her to have a freedom that Héloïse will never have.
Period dramas can often reveal something about the present. Portrait of a Lady on Fire shows how lesbian dramas in cinema so often get it completely wrong. By drawing attention to the art of looking, Sciamma lets us see that lesbian intimacy is so much more than a sex scene, and how it’s about time cinema started to represent the lesbian gaze.
