Passion simmers beneath a solemn surface before bursting free in the last act of Céline Sciamma’s eighteenth-century feminist tale, which also reflects a modern attitude toward same-sex love. Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is a Parisian painter, whose student discovers one of her teacher’s canvases bearing the film’s title; that leads to a long flashback in which Marianne recalls the unusual commission behind it. She was hired by a Countess (Valeria Golino) to paint a portrait of her daughter Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) for her prospective husband. Marianne travels to a castle on the coast of Brittany to paint the girl, who has recently been called home from a convent school. There is a further wrinkle: Héloïse refuses to pose, so Marianne must pretend merely to be a companion, doing the portrait secretly on the basis of random observations during their time together. The Countess is called away on business, leaving the two women alone but for the maid Sophie (Luana Bajrami), who enlists them in an effort to help her end an unwanted pregnancy. She also introduces them to the local women, who assemble on the beach to sing around a bonfire—an image of female solidarity that serves as the basis for the titular painting. Marianne and Héloïse gradually grow fond of one another, despite the painter’s imposture, and affection becomes physical attraction. The passion that results is reflected in a piece of music Marianne introduces to Héloïse—a tempestuous passage from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which she plays on the castle’s barely-used harpsichord. The music returns at the film’s end, years after the women’s brief encounter, when Marianne recalls the two occasions on which she had contact with Héloïse again—once indirectly, through a later portrait of the now-married woman with her daughter, in which a telling detail indicates that the subject has not forgotten the artist who had earlier painted her, and again from a distance in a concert hall—and the sense of longing in Marianne’s recollections mirrors that perceptible in the older Héloïse. The title of Sciamma’s film, of course, has a double meaning. It refers to the painting Marianne does of Héloïse on the beach, and the love that the two women felt—and continued to feel—for one another. But it also speaks to the bond among women in a society dominated by men. (It is hardly accidental that the Latin lyric of the song the village women sing on the beach is 'Fugere non possum'—'I cannot escape.') The performances are impeccable, and the images—Thomas Grezaud’s sets, Dorothée Guiraud’s costumes and the gorgeous locations, all captured in Claire Mathon’s luminous cinematography—equally so. Nor should the evocative score by Jean-Baptiste de Laubier and Arthur Simonini go unmentioned. This offbeat period feminist fable is both visually exquisite and dramatically intoxicating. Extras include a conversation by Sciamma with critic Dana Stevens and interviews with Merlant, Haenel, Mathon and painter Hélène Delmaire. Highly recommended. (F. Swietek)
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