From ages 11 to 14, British pupils are required to study Art. I remember my particular Art teacher, in which the only thing we agreed on was that I shouldn’t take the subject for GCSE, routinely argued that one “should never draw from memory”. Noémie Merlant’s Marianne is tasked with such at the inception of Portrait of a Lady on Fire; commissioned to create an objective image through the means of subjective study. Despite countless walks and constant glances, there's ultimately a reason the face of the final product is blurred - it isn’t authentic to the subject because Marianne wasn’t authentic in approach.
So, should you draw from memory? The waltz between painter and painted has never been so carefully examined as it is in Sciamma’s film; the dynamic between Marianne and Adele Haenel’s Héloïse resembles the opening of a flower in rain and is underlined in its ad interim almost immediately, that soon the clouds will scarper and petals will begin to wilt. Photographs obviously derive from painting, in wishing to capture a subject in a particular moment, but they have one fatal flaw - they’re objective. Marianne’s efforts in capturing Héloïse can be broken into three, and all three indicate less a change in the subject but instead, the artist herself. The aforementioned inauthentic first attempt doesn’t paint the picture because whilst it’s formed through memory; Héloïse is observed rather than understood, and hence it is fabricated. The second canvas turns the original on its head. The subject is before Marianne in both pose and passion, the artist now with a visual to recreate and yet, it’s the remembered details that matters. The position of hands when moved, the biting of lips when embarrassed and a long stare when annoyed. The intimacy of Sciamma’s film arrives late, and coincides with the creation of the latter piece - it’s careful and delicate, why they’re welded together and why they’re broken apart.
The central relationship depicted in the film is homosexual, but despite its eighteenth century setting, Sciammi does not attempt to highlight the possibility of persecution all too much. With the context of the film’s eighteenth century backdrop, one could imagine the taboo nature of Marianne and Heloise’s ‘forbidden’ relationship, and imagine is all we can do. Sciamma is careful not to veer into the newfound cliche within gay cinema that presents homosexuality as rebellious rather than naturalistic. There is of course a revolutionary fervour to the central romance, but only in self-discovery rather than in setting the world alight. The isolation of an island off the coast of Morbihan, Brittany provides a sort of sanctuary against societal pressures, allowing Heloise’s aversion to marriage continue just a little while longer, whilst also allowing a romance to blossom. Subtlety, the near-idyllic island is forever threatened with the crashing waves that surround it - promising that conformity will eventually reach the islet, and inevitably both the painter and the poser.
It’s the portrait de la jeune fille en feu that is most striking as a combination of the former two efforts. An ironic landscape, of a woman’s back wandering from clouds and towards the rising Sun; the eternal flames flickering on her dress, Héloïse. It is the furthest painting from objective reality, and yet sets it’s gaze the widest. There’s no date set on when Marianne crafted this third piece, which we can only assume is her final, though it is imagined it takes place much after their goodbye and following Marianne’s sighting of her as Vivaldi plays to an audience, and Héloïse is overcome with emotion. Thus, the titular painting is drawn through memory, for that is all the painted is now to the painter. An empty, faceless walk towards light where a flame ever flickers and refuses to die out. Drawing from memory is the only way to draw.
Written by Harry J. Wormald | IG: @harryjwormald
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