Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
French writer-director Celine Sciamma’s film, poignantly titled Portrait if a Lady on Fire, is a most formally assured film about an historically unusual and emotionally devastating romance.
The take is set in the late 18th century and revolves around women who have few options beyond marriage or domestic service.
Part of its cumulative power is how profoundly personal it feels, and part of how fully realized it is as an art film.
The drama revolves around artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and her subject Héloïse (Adèle Haenel, once Sciamma’s own partner), who must marry a man she’s never met (the portrait is meant to be a guarantor of her beauty for him), as they create a tiny Eden of love over the time it takes to finish the work.
The parallel with filmmaking is obvious, but the movie stays grounded in period-accurate realism and the combustible chemistry of the leads.
The last shot of Héloïse, listening to a Vivaldi concert years later, her heart breaking all over again, is (along with the final shot from number 25 on this list) one of the all-time great long takes of an actor seemingly doing nothing but showing every flicker of feeling with the subtlest shifts of expression.
