perceptive observer
· storytelling is a form of protest ·
Portrait of a lady on fire, the politics of representation, desire, and co-creation

In solitude, I found the liberty you spoke of. But I also felt your absence.

Love stories can be found everywhere in mainstream media: movies, literature, music, the internet. And yet, it’s been a while that I don’t find love stories relatable. That is partly because I grew up seeing couples clichés, or just stereotypes, or just the norm (monogamous, heterosexual, following specific roles) almost everywhere. As someone who personally feels in the margins of a dominant culture that keeps telling me how to behave and how to love, I had to do my search and investigate way more in order to understand myself and my identity.

Partly because of this becakground is why I get really hyped when I come across with stories that find new ways of telling love stories, or just stories in general that subvert the norms or expectations. Or that feel just more inclusive. Not surprisingly, sometimes these works also come from people who push the social boundaries in their personal lives and own identity (queers, anarchists, artists, hippies, etc.) This is probably not the last post that I will write on the topic, but in this ocassion I want to discuss Portrait of a Lady on Fire and the many ways it provoked me, particularly around the themes of love, desire, sisterhood and the process of artistic creation.

The movie is a period film set in France around the end of the eighteenth century. The plot in general revolves around Marianne and Héloise. Marianne is a painter who is commisioned to do a portrait of Héloise. This portrait would be a gift for her future husband, but because Héloise refuses the marriage, Marianne is hired as a walking companion and must do the portrait without Héloise knowing. Challenge accepted.
What I described is just the surface of the plot, because of course there is so much happening that for now I will just describe it as a slow burn. Or as the movie director Céline Sciamma beautifully said: desire is all about delay.

I recently started a drawing course and a message that stayed with me is that drawing is about remembering what you have closely looked. Painting and drawing is all about observing. Paying attention and then recalling.


Marianne looking at Héloise and thinking of her when painting

But there are ways of looking. As I have written in the about section of the blog, there is never only observation. The gaze is political. Which made me think of the concept of the male gaze that has been described in feminist studies. In most mass media including film, television, music, and the internet, women are regularly sexualized, they are there to be looked at as object of desire. If you want to delve more in the topic I recommend these analysis: this one focuses in music industry and this one generally on women’s representation. So the first refreshing aspect of the movie was to see the relationship between the protagonists but through other lenses. It was not about their bodies, how they look, or what they wear. It was about their feelings, ambitions, and desires, including how they look at each other. I felt their looks were an invitation to ask ourselves how we look at things, how we look at creation, and how we look at love.


Marianne’s looks. Yup, desire is all about delay.

When you fall in love there is confusion at the beginning precisely because you cannot observe what is happening from the other person’s point of view. Is she feeling in a similar way as you feel? what is she actually feeling or thinking? Therefore there is also hesitation and holding back things. But what is like to fall in love and to feel in love? That is also another novelty I found in the movie. Instead of giving a stereotype, gender roles, or a recipe for love, it tells us more about the process of loving. Someone on youtube uploaded one of my favourite sequences in the movie, which is when Héloise asks Marianne: “If you look at me, who do I look at?”, reminding her that in that regard there were no hierarchies between them. Again, this struck me personally because it made me think about not having hierarchies in relationships, not necessarely in the sense of monogamy, but also in the day to day dynamics, because when you are in a relationship you are in an active role as a subject, it’s not that someone is the object and the other the subject. In the movie, we might have thought that Marianne was the one studying Héloise, but the other way around was also happening.

It was interesting to see how Marianne and Héloise influenced each other. The painting was a co-creation process. The idea of Héloise being “the muse” of Marianne is being subverted as well, because here they work together. Yes, Marianne is painting, but Héloise challenges her and they both share their ideas and opinions, which ultimately influences the end product, who to an extent they did together. This aspect made me think of my previous partners as well. Not just romantic partners but also friends who inspire me to create or co-create with them. I wrote previously about this brain-soul partnerships in this post.

Another theme that I found in the movie is that of sisterhood, an strong support among women. Particularly between Marianne, Héloise and Sophie, the latest being the girl who helped in the house, who later finds out that is pregnant and Marianne and Héloise support her and accompany her during the process of having an abortion, which is a contemporary topic that I also found powerful being represented in the movie because there is a need for more discussion, visibility, and more understanding in general about it. #AbortoLegalSeguroyGratuito

What is painted and what is not painted. Abortions are not painted.

Which brings me back to the notion of what we get and don’t get represented in the media. I was reading this article where the writer traces back the concept of representation to what Durkheim, sociologist, describes as “traer cosas a la mente”, or “recalling things, bringing them up to your mind”. Therefore I found the whole movie as a beautiful metaphor for realizing that there are things that are painted and things that are not painted. This applies also other mediums such as film, literature, music or instagram. You later recall all these imagineries and stories. And with this insight more questions emerge, because who gets to tell the stories, and for who are these stories and what do these stories do? Certainly they have certain impact in our lives, expectations, and social organization in general.

The last aspect that I want to comment is on the process of artistic creation. In interviews, Céline mentioned that situating the movie at the end of the 18th century allowed her to represent the work of a woman painter, because there were a lot of them, but then again history is not neccesarily being interpreted and written by women, so therefore again the relevance of representation is important to highlight. Women that paint existed. Abortion existed. Women who loved women existed. The question is then, what is allowed to exist?

Portrait of a Lady of Fire is a movie that I needed. In an interview, Sciamma mentioned that she tries to make room in her movies for your own story. And I see this somehow more inclusive. Design for inclusivenes. It’s not that this movie for example is only for the LGBTQ+ people just because there are two women protagonists, overall it’s a love story, it can be relatable to anyone who has fallen in love. It’s a film that personally inspired me to keep reinventing and questioning how I look at things and how do I reproduce ideas or stereotypes. I am happy it’s winning awards and hopefully reaches more audiences. Still, it was not nominated for the Oscars, probably if a white dude would have directed it that would have been different, but oh well, someday soon. This is changing.

Bonus:

When writing this post I watched interviews with the director and actresses and they are just brilliant as well.
Here the links for more insights and inspiration:
Q&A at Toronto Film Festival
On the art of collaboration
Céline Sciamma on the memory of love, and the politics of pockets
“Wonderful inteview and wonderful interviewer”, someone in the youtube comments.

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