2019 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 6 – Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Shining bright like a diamond, Céline Sciamma makes her way into the comp for a first time with her fourth feature film. Portrait of a Lady on Fire see the filmmaker reteam with herWater Lilies starlet Adèle Haenel — that debut film was selected for for the Un Certain Regard section in 2007. She would follow that with the Berlin entry Tomboy (she also wrote Being 17 which shored up at the same fest) and the third part in her coming of age trilogy in the Directors’ Fortnight Girlhood. Featuring Valeria Golino as La Comtesse and Haenel as Héloïse, set in 1760, this historical drama is more the story of Marianne — the painter goes outside the traced lines and becomes invested in much more than the paint job at hand.

Clocking in at just underneath the two hour mark, Sciamma’s film played right after Terrence Malick’s film and so we’ve got only a handful of grades, but something tells me we’ll be getting some upcoming 4 star grade support as this film.

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