David Elliott
Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, new each Friday.
APPETIZER (Review of Portrait
of a Lady on Fire)
Inevitably sold in this country
as a “lesbian romance,” Portrait of a
Lady on Fire is so clearly a French art film of complex ambition that you
wonder how much of it will be absorbed by prurient peepers. There is some
informal and tender nudity, but the sexuality is in the pervasive, pensive
sensuality that begins to build at the start. Maybe it was to deflect such shallow
voyeurism that the English title female is a “lady” instead of a “young girl”
(the French title is Portrait de la jeune
fille en feu, a variant on the more familiar jeune fille en fleur, young girl flowering).Well, vive les nuances, because they are the
essence, manner and method of one of the most elegant movies of recent years.
Céline Sciamma, the director
and writer whose previous work centers on young, modern girls and women, has by
all accounts found her finest platform, by going to the late 18th
century (not very late; no mention of the Revolution or Napoleon). She has
re-imagined it as a stylized feminist idyll of discovery, though “feminist”
doesn’t exist for these women. Héloise (Adele Haenel) is brought home to a seaside
villa from a convent, to replace her recently dead (likely suicide) sister, who
went over a nearby cliff before an arranged marriage. Her mother, the widowed Comtesse
(Valeria Golino, a long way from her young work in Big Top Pee-wee), is the arranger. She wanted to marry the lass to
a Milanese nobleman so that she, an Italian, can return home in high style.
Now Héloise returns home, ordered
to marry the unseen foreigner who expects an oil portrait that will ratify his
choice. The sister’s male painter departed in haste, leaving the portrait’s face
as a smeary remnant of loss, rage or ineptitude. His replacement is Marianne
(Noémie Merlant), daughter of a painter, herself a very talented artist and art
teacher, but as a woman denied access by the art patriarchy to male nude models,
crucial to major Salon themes. Héloise, who misses her convent so free of males
(few appear in the story), fears marriage and refuses to pose. But shyly, slyly
she opens to Marianne, who at first sketches her covertly. The home’s large,
spare rooms (evidence of fading income?) are like canvases, with the story
seemingly painted into place by the impeccable brush strokes of glances, moods
and confidential talk. This is the most exquisite vision of the era since Eric
Rohmer’s The Lady and the Duke (2001),
which created revolutionary Paris with wonderful painted and digital backdrops.
The deepening suspense is the
testing intimacy between the women through shared intelligence and longing. Cinematographer
Clair Mathon embraces them in a chiaroscuro from fireplaces and candles, in fine
fabrics both actual and painted, all beautifully composed. Even with talk about the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, the liaison is never bloodless and seems to
anticipate Romanticism. Merlant’s Marianne has an advantage. More arrestingly
pretty with her dark, piercing eyes, she gets to paint, and thrill Héloise by
playing Vivaldi on a spinet. Haenel, however, projects more mystery and yearning. Their visits to the sea seem to evoke the future
beach vistas of Courbet, Corot and Monet. Sciamma doesn’t need to emphasize
sex, because her movie is a pulsing tapestry of quietly erotic touches, clues
and portents.
At times we notice the educated
French urge to map out feelings as concepts. Some dialog emits a parfum analytique de Sorbonne, like “In
solitude I feel the liberty you speak of, but I also feel your absence.” The
silences feel loaded with thought. The sequence of the two women helping their
charming little servant find an abortion, using the folk wisdom of peasant
women, seems rather imported, to add a more modern social solidarity and
feminist urgency to the story. Still, you can’t blame the French for being
French, and the lesbian romantic theme is so deeply sensitive and exquisitely
poignant that only a clod would not be moved. There is a wistful double coda, one
at the official Salon in Paris, and one at an orchestral concert that pushes
the emotional pedal. But who can complain about hearing Vivaldi again?
SALAD: A List
12 Major Performances by French Women in French Films
Each is indisputably special (with
director, year):
Marie Falconetti as Jeanne in
Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (Dreyer
1928), Jeanne Moreau as Catherine in Jules
et Jim (Truffaut 1963), Juliette Binoche as Julie in Three Colors: Blue (Kieslowski 1993), Simone Signoret as Marie in Casque d’Or (Becker 1952), Anna Karina
as Nana (photo above) in Vivre Sa Vie
(Godard 1962), Isabelle Adjani as Adele Hugo in Histoire de Adele H. (Truffaut 1975), Catherine Deneuve as Severine
in Belle de Jour (Buñuel 1967),
Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie
en Rose (Dahan 2007), Arletty as Garance in Les Enfants de Paradis (Carné 1945), Maria Schneider as Jeanne in Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci 1972),
Dita Parlo as Odile in L’Atalante
(Vigo 1934) and little Catherine Demongeot as Zazie, seen in the photo below
from Zazie dans le Métro (Malle
1960).
WINE (Vin
Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)
For Orson Welles, the supreme
French director was Jean Renoir (and he was right). Here is a taste of his 1979
obituary salute to Renoir in the Los
Angeles Times: “It’s safe to say that the owners of Pierre Auguste Renoir’s
paintings in Bel-Air and Beverly Hills are (mostly) connected with the movies.
And it’s just as safe to say that not one of them has ever been connected with
any movie comparable to the masterpieces of the painter’s son Jean. Some of
these were commercial and even, in their time, critical failures. Some enjoyed
success. None were blockbusters. Many were immortal.” (From This Is Orson Welles, by Welles and
Peter Bogdanovich).
ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)
Funny Face
(1957) is not a great French movie – it isn’t even French – but it has the most
joyous salute to tourist Paris. After arriving at Orly airport, Americans Jo
(Audrey Hepburn), Dick (Fred Astaire) and Maggie (Kay Thompson) “separately
invade 38 sites, their lyrics landing in giddy, overlapping rhythm at Les
Invalides, Notre Dame, Sacré Couer, Versailles, St. Cloud, etc. Jo cheerfully
informs the Left Bank that ‘I want to
philosophize with all the guys, around Montmartre.” In musical sync each
pilgrim intuits the obligatory finale, uniting at the Eiffel Tower: ‘We’re strictly tourists, you can chatter
and jeer / All we want to say is Lafayette we are here – bonjour, Paris!”
(From the Hepburn/Funny Face chapter
of my book Starlight Rising: Acting Up in
Movies, available from Amazon, Nook and Kindle.)
DESSERT (An Image)
As Zazie, Parisian scamp of Zazie dans le Métro, Catherine Demongeot
became a vanguard mascot of the French New Wave and its impudent energies. Seen
here with co-star Philippe Noiret (Pathé 1960; director Louis Malle, d.p. Henri
Raichi).
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