'Portrait Of A Lady On Fire,' Painted In Precise, Subdued Brushstrokes
Two women — a noblewoman and the artist hired to paint her portrait — fall in love in Céline Sciamma's haunting, erotic and evocative period drama.
The woman must not know that she is being painted. Her portrait is intended for some faraway suitor, and she refuses to pose for it, because sealing her likeness in a frame is the first step toward sealing her entire self inside a loveless marriage. And so the painter accompanies her subject on walks, gathering details of her face in furtive glimpses: the shape of her ears, the piercing stare of her eyes. Later,
