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France, 1963: Working-class college student Anne Duchesne (Anamaria Vartolomei) found the future prospects she worked so hard for slipping away upon the discovery she was pregnant. As friends and health care providers turned their backs, she'd have no avenues available except the most extreme of measures. Director Audrey Diwan's harrowing take on the 2000 Annie Ernaux memoir also stars Kacey Mottet Klein, Luàna Bajrami, Louise Orry-Diquéro, Pio Marmaï. 100 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: French; Subtitles: English. In French with English subtitles.

Description

Passion brews quietly between an artist and her subject, until they together create a space in which it can briefly flourish, in this sumptuous eighteenth-century romance from Céline Sciamma, one of contemporary French cinema’s most acclaimed auteurs. Summoned to an isolated seaside estate on a secret assignment, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) must find a way to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who is resisting chattel marriage, by furtively observing her. What unfolds in exquisite tension is an exchange of sustained gazes in which the two women come to know each other’s gestures, expressions, and bodies with rapturous intimacy, ultimately forging a subversive creative collaboration as well as a delirious romance. Charged with a yearning that almost transcends time and space, Portrait of a Lady on Fire mines the emotional and artistic possibilities that emerge when women can freely live together and look at one another in a world without men DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES • New 4K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack • New conversation between director Céline Sciamma and film critic Dana Stevens • New interviews with actors Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant • Interview with cinematographer Claire Mathon from the 2019 Cannes Film Festival • Interview from 2019 with artist Hélène Delmaire on creating the paintings for the film, along with behind-the-scenes footage • New English subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by film critic Ela Bittencourt.