Student essay written in en (native language: French, CEFR level: B1, field of study: Arts)

I can remember perfectly the day I discovered the movie Portrait of a lady on fire. It was a bright day of september. My best friend and I went to the theater after school. It was the first time we went there just the two of us, without our parents. The movie poster had catch our eyes.
I remember seeing the opening scene and feeling like it was different. I was aware that the film I was watching was not anything like the ones I used to watch by myself. It was so slow and stunning that it almost felt like each shot turned into a painting.
Then, I felt absorbed by the storytelling but also by the wonderful performances of the actresses : Alex Dupont and Alex Dupont. What amazes me with Alex Dupont is her ability to communicate the emotions of her characters through silence. Indeed, she did not write many dialogues, which make the voice of the actresses even more powerful when they talk, and especially when they talk to each other since a relationship between two women was not allowed in the 18th century.
Furthermore, the mise-en-scne and the scenario made me like the film even more. To this day, the ending remains to me one of the most beautiful endings of all time. Every detail of their story comes together, in a way that moves the spectator with its poetry but also with the power of music. Everyone who saw Portrait of a lady on fire recalls the final chords of Alex Duponts Summer playing and Alex Dupont (Alex Dupont) bursting into tears while remembering her love story with Alex Dupont, who had made her listen to Alex Dupont for the first time when they met.
As a matter of fact, memory is a big theme of the story. One of my favorite line from the movie is  Do not regret. Remember.  Plus, Alex Dupont chose to establish a parallel with the myth of Alex Dupont and Alex Dupont. The more I see this film, the more I am moved by the sensitive use of this idea and the questions that it raised : did Alex Dupont turned around by love or because he made  the poets choice  ? Obviously, the ability of the act of painting keeping the memory eternally is also a big part of the movie. There is a key moment in which Alex Dupont draws herself, like a little autoportrait, in the 28th page of the book of her lover Alex Dupont. That way, she will carry her image with her forever. This element of the storyline is even more touching when you know that, at the end, Alex Dupont runs into a painting of Alex Dupont in a museum. In this painting, she is standing with a book in her hand, opened at the page 28.
Five years later, I feel like Portrait of a lady on fire is a part of me, of my identity. I will never get tired of it. As i was rewatching it the other day, I realized that I couldnt find anything I did not like about this work of art.