Portrait of a Lady on Fire beautifully visualises the power of gazing through its portrayal of a sensual sapphic romance within a temporarily all-female space.
Set in eighteenth-century France, the film follows the love story of Héloïse, a betrothed gentlewoman, and a painter named Marianne, who unbeknownst to Héloïse has been commissioned to secretly paint her portrait for her suitor. Sciamma’s directorial techniques operate over Marianne’s artistic rendering of Héloïse to create a film which is in Sciamma’s own words “a manifesto about the female gaze”. Lingering close up shots on the character’s faces and the painter/subject subplot are used to foreground the significance of gazing, and to convey the characters’ burgeoning desires.
We enter the story through Marianne’s painting of Héloïse on the beach. The painting functions as a portal into Marianne’s past memory of a remote island where men are temporarily absent, but their presence is still felt through Héloïse’s looming marriage. Héloïse is first introduced with her head covered and her back to Marianne and the spectator, conveying her refusal to be looked upon. Through a tracking shot we follow her to the cliff edge until she abruptly stops and turns around to pierce us with her own, transfixing gaze. By catching the spectator in the act of looking, she challenges the male gaze through which she has been subjugated by aristocratic society, and establishes a sense of agency.
Obligated to keep her own gaze surreptitious due to Héloïse’s history of unwillingness to pose for her portrait, Marianne is initially restricted to perceiving Héloïse as her artistic subject. However, when Marianne steals glances of her to confine them to her memory, Héloïse does the same, and the women begin to watch each other through lingering and increasingly confident gazes which express their intensifying desires.
When Marianne confesses the truth of her visit to Héloïse, she shows her the portrait she has secretly painted, to which Héloïse demands: “Is that how you see me?” The painting does not present her through Marianne’s own perception, but through the artistic “rules, conventions, ideas” which pertain to a male gaze. Marianne consequently destroys the painting’s face and the gaze it conveys, resolving to capture Héloïse the way that she sees her. After eliminating the presence of the intangible male voyeur, and after Héloïse’s patriarchal mother leaves the island so the portrait can be completed, Marianne and Héloïse acquire a newfound agency which enables them to enter into a painter/subject relationship and to explore their desires by establishing a sexual intimacy.
Héloïse is willing to be perceived and painted by Marianne, whose gaze she can also return. In one instance, she instructs Marienne to neglect her position as painter and stand next to her as subject, saying, ‘If you look at me, who do I look at?’ She demonstrates to Marianne that both the painter and the subject have agency through their reciprocated gaze. Their roles are therefore not hierarchised, nor are they fixed.
In an intimate scene, Héloïse poses naked with a looking glass against her crotch which reflects Marianne’s face, encouraging Marianne to not only look at her as she draws her, but to also look at herself looking at Héloïse. The boundaries between ‘gazer’ and ‘gazee’ are disassembled along with the women’s physical boundaries. Their equal and fluid painter/subject relationship thus becomes a metaphor for their love, which is devoid of gender domination.
However, after five days their bubble is burst by the return of Héloïse’s mother and the jarring appearance of a man to collect the portrait. Just as the women must return to their reality, we re-emerge into the patriarchal world to contemplate the significance of the ever-present male gaze.
“Day 7 in Cannes” by PAN Photo Agency is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.