Review: Blazingly intelligent 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' is one of 2019's great love stories
An exquisitely realized story about forbidden love, forgotten art and the implicit power of a woman's gaze, Celine Sciamma's "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" shares its title with a painting by an 18th century Parisian named Marianne (Noemie Merlant). She's an accomplished artist who inherited her trade from her father, though it's typical of the attitudes of her era, among others, that her work is still often mistaken for his. This particular painting, however - of a young woman walking calmly on a beach, the bottom of her dress aflame - is one that Marianne has no intention of exhibiting under any name, as it turns out to have been inspired by a deeply personal memory.
The woman in the painting is Heloise
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