Portrait of A Lady on Fire **** (4 out of 5 stars)

I think this French-made movie is this year’s Call Me by Your Name. To enjoy this film, you have to be very committed to foreign films, be ok with reading subtitles, and seeing lots of beautiful scenes of girl on girl. Set in an island off of Brittany, France in the 18th century, it is about a precocious and independent young female portrait painter from Paris, Marianne, who is hired to paint the portrait of the beautiful and reluctant young Heloise, a headstrong but naive young woman, whose widowed mother is hoping to get her married off to a wealthy Italian. Back in the 18th century when emails and photography do not exist, the oil portrait of Heloise is tremendously important as it will be sent to a suitor in Milan, and if it pleases him, he will marry her and bring her and the mother to Italy. Over the course of the two weeks it takes to paint the portrait, the two young women grow to love each other and in the end, the inevitable happens. It is, of course, doomed from the start, so we feel the torture of impending loss, and we know that when the portrait is finished the short love affair will be over, and both girls will have to live only with the memory of this first love. This is a truly beautiful work of art, but it has some slow moments and some very strange sexual cinematic moments that may be off-putting to some…its theme and visuals are so similar to Call Me By Your Name, but just more French and more female!