“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” Restored My Faith in Love Stories
By: The Transgender Therapist
Tags: LGBTQ, Love, Review, Opinion, Film

I’m not one for typical love stories.

The insipid platitudes, the over-the-top drama, and the inevitable end where everything works out perfectly all feel like a boring waste of time. Certainly, part of it is my own bitterness. My love and my relationships will never be celebrated or respected in the same way as these love stories, because dominant narratives don’t have room for me. I’m not going to have hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars thrown at me for getting married, due to me being estranged from nearly my entire family because I’m queer and trans.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that queer love stories mean so much more to me than mainstream dramas like The Notebook. While I like looking at Ryan Gosling for hours just as much as the next dude, the storyline isn’t one that I see myself in. The same is true about gay romance movies like The Happiest Season starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis, where the only issue is that someone had a hard time coming out — and once they did, everything was magically wonderful. The feel of that movie was almost identical to a “straight” love story with the neat bow that tied up the conclusion, and everyone was fine and great and lived happily ever after.

By contrast, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a period drama set in the 1770s, is a queer love story that is as enthralling as it is heartbreaking, not to mention one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. Best of all, the film’s director, Céline Sciamma, made the intentional decision to not spend half of the narrative having the leads, Héloïse and Marianne, obsessing about how to come out or what it meant to be queer (unlike Happiest Season). They simply existed together as lovers for just a few days, falling for each other hard despite knowing that they could never be together. It was love for love's sake--intoxicating, consuming, pure and unrestrained.

The actors playing the two leads, Adèle Haenel (Héloïse) and Noémie Merlant (Marianne), are actually queer women. This is an oddity in a world where mainstream entertainment will do anything it can to profit off of queer lives and stories while making sure that cisgender and heterosexual people stay squarely in the middle of the narrative. To add to the authenticity of the film, Adèle Haenel is Sciamma’s ex-girlfriend in real life.

Sciamma, Merlant and Haenel attend NEON Celebrates Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Parasite — TIFF 2019 at Soho House Toronto in Canada. Getty Images, North America.

It was evident that queer minds created this story and brought it to life. The romance wasn’t ham fisted or forced. There was no suitor who came back again and again despite the object of his affection rebuffing him. Instead, there were lingering, meaningful looks. There was genuine interest to understand one another. And there were both subtle and intense ways that Marianne and Héloïse expressed their devotion.

Even the sex scenes invited the casually intimate; the two women weren’t concerned about their hair looking perfect or proving that they were good in bed. While one scene featuring a close-up of a recreational substance being rubbed into Marianne’s armpit was pretty cheesy, there was also an element of vulnerability present in that moment that represented a theme that was woven throughout the film.

Initially, Marianne followed the instructions of Héloïse’s mother to pretend she was merely a companion while gathering all the visual information she needed to compose Héloïse’s portrait. Héloïse refused to sit for painters in the past as a protest to the life that would be forced upon her — marrying a man chosen by her family for reasons of status. Finally, Marianne revealed her motives and showed Héloïse the portrait she was creating. Héloïse felt deep pain, asking “Is this how you see me?” Marianne, overwhelmed with defeat and frustration, ruined the painting. Héloïse convinced her upset mother to give Marianne another chance. This time, she would sit for the portrait while her mother left their homestead for five days.

Adèle has publicly opposed the trope of the passive muse, and this stereotypical concept was turned on its head in the film. What does it say about a muse when the artist whom finds her so inspiring is also a woman? When the exploitation of the muse is revealed and that muse dares to critique the piece her image created, what does that intentional act mean? Furthermore, when Héloïse acquiesced to sitting for the portrait that Marianne was tasked to paint in secret, how does that relate to her small opportunity for agency in a lifetime of coercion?

Toward the end of their time together, Marianne lashed out with frustration and pain that Héloïse was not fighting the upcoming nuptials. Upon finding out that Héloïse’s mother was returning, Marianne raised her voice and projected her heartbreak onto her. Héloïse fled to the beach on which they spent so much time together. Marianne ran up to Héloïse from behind, embracing her and sobbing into her neck. “Forgive me,” she cried. “Forgive me.”

Still from “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” Lilies Films, fair use

Marianne and Héloïse were not given a proper opportunity to say goodbye, as Héloïse’s mother was hurrying her into her new husband’s arms. Marianne ran down the stairs of the home before Héloïse appeared behind her. “Turn around,” she said. She was referencing the myth of Orpheus that came up during a game of cards one night.

In this story, Orpheus (son of a muse) married his love, Eurydice, who died soon after from a snake bite. Orpheus traveled to the land of the dead to ask Hades to allow him to bring her back. Hades agreed, on one condition: they would not be permitted to look back. Once he saw the sun again, Orpheus turned around to share his delight with Eurydice, breaking his promise to Hades. Eurydice disappeared.

During their conversation over cards, Marianne was baffled at Orpheus’ decision to look back. Héloïse posed the possibility that it was Eurydice who told him to turn around. In the stilted farewell between Héloïse and Marianne, there was no other option besides Héloïse disappearing. Perhaps it felt like they had one last moment of agency, a final opportunity to rebel against all that was keeping them away from each other.

I loved this film because it invited us to get swept away in Marianne and Héloïse’s whirlwind romance, to feel the devastation of the moment when it was stolen from them. As the saying goes, “it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” American culture is often obsessed with the idea of a happy ending, and I found it so refreshing that this French film focused on the pureness of love and its inherent worth — what one may be willing to endure just to luxuriate in the incomparable feeling of love.

Still from “Call Me By Your Name,” Sony Pictures, fair use

The mood of the final shot of this film felt eerily similar to the last scene of Call Me By Your Name when Elio, portrayed by Timothée Chalamet, quietly cried in front of the fireplace after receiving news that his fleeting summer love was engaged to be married. Elio’s face was the picture of classic heartbreak, raw and shocked, inconsolable and numb. Sufjan Stevens’ “Visions of Gideon” played softly against the crackling of the fire and the footsteps of Elio’s mother setting the table behind him.

In the final shot of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Héloïse was watching an orchestral performance, unaccompanied by the man that she had been forced to marry. The orchestra began to play Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons — Summer in G Minor,” a song she recognized from a conversation she had had with Marianne years earlier. When Marianne had played an amateur version of the song on a harpsichord, Héloïse smirked and couldn’t take her eyes off of her.

Héloïse’s facial expressions as she experienced the music were more dynamic and fluid than Elio’s. You could see the entire love affair flash across her face. She had brief moments of laughter, held her breath in grief, cried at what she would never get to have with Marianne. The complex layers, intensity, passion and depth of their love was truly reflected in the way she experienced the piece of music. I couldn’t help but cry myself while watching her travel through every heavy feeling she had, as if her unled life was flashing before her eyes. The song ended abruptly with an epic undertone that lingered long after the musicians placed down their instruments.

Marianne spotted Héloïse from across the theater, watching her as her chest heaved and tears ran down her face. Marianne had already seen a new portrait of Héloïse, holding hands with a little girl. In the painting, Héloïse held a book that was bookmarked by her finger — the page that with an image drawn of Marianne in bed. Héloïse did not notice Marianne in the theatre.

The two never saw each other again, but several years later, Marianne’s painting called Portrait of a Lady on Fire was revealed when she was working with a class of women who were perfecting their painting skills. It referenced the night on the beach during which it became clear that the two were enamored with one another, the night that would change their lives forever. The story as told through the painting highlighted the idea that both Héloïse and Marianne would carry their love in their hearts for as long as they lived.

These women did not have the option to live happily ever after with one another, and they knew that from the beginning of their love affair. Each night that they lay together, watched the ocean while sitting on the beach, and had dinner together, they knew their time together was passing swiftly. Even when anticipating deep pain, they focused on each other and the way they felt together.

I cried thinking of the life that they could have had if they were in a different time or place. I thought about Héloïse being forced to spend her days with a man she didn’t love, perhaps never having a romantic or sexual relationship with a woman again. And I thought about Marianne, whose life circumstances could have allowed her to be with Héloïse, and who was tragically unable to break Héloïse out of the prison of her life’s circumstances.

Héloïse and Marianne never forgot about each other. Their pain was difficult to bear, and they had to move on with their lives. Portrait of a Lady on Fire was tragic, unforgettable, and has taken up station in my mind ever since I watched it. Their story is about living when one’s heart aches and cries out; it’s about the writhing and timeless pain that underscores life’s struggles; and it’s knowing that you can’t always get what you want, or even deserve. This was the queer love story I’d been searching for, even when it ended in a way that tore me apart.