Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of A Lady on Fire,” a sumptuously made 121 minute triumph which simmers with slow-burn until it breaks your heart ten-fold, was the leading contender to win the Palme D’or this past May at Cannes. That is until Bong joon-ho’s “Parasite” ended up triumphing and nabbing the top prize instead.
A French trailer for Sciamma’s movie has been released today, coinciding with its selection at the prestigious New York Film Festival (which I hear had a divisive reaction to the film, not unlike 2017 when Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name” barely squeaked by into the festival selection, despite reservations from NYFF head Kent Jones).
In my Cannes review of “Portrait of A Lady On Fire” I wrote that the film “is surely one of the peaks of entirely female-led cinema that we’ve seen in recent years, if ever. It’s mind-boggling how it is still such a novelty to watch women direct women, so much so that the film captures moments of incredible simplicity and yet they feel so fresh because these feelings have rarely, if ever, been dealt with such honesty before.”
“A far cry from Sciamma’s handheld work in “Girlhood,” her last film, this painterly film is set in Brittany circa 1770. Marianne (incendiary work from Noémie Merlant) is teaching a painting class, but all of a sudden tears up when a student points to a portrait of a lady on fire that is standing in the back of the room. The rest of the film is comprised of flashbacks explaining Marianne’s connection with the painting.”
NEON is supposed to release “Portrait of A Lady on Fire” this coming December.