HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU
This interview with the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire took place at Cannes, where the film premiered in competition.
To what degree were you thinking about the many movies that have been made about a male artist and the woman who inspired him?
I didn’t have to think much about that because basically we know by heart the story as it has been told so far, so I didn’t have to craft my answer to that. I wanted to tell another story, not didactically, but in very emotional, sentimental, political ways. At the center of the film is this idea that there is no muse, or that it’s a beautiful word for hiding the reality of how women have been collaborating with artists. I wanted to portray the intellectual dialogue and not to forget that there are several brains in the room. We see how art history reduces the collaboration between artists and
