Article written by Bruno Passos

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Director: Céline Sciamma

French cinema tends to be fatalistic when it tells love stories, it’s as if they want to remind us all the time that they’re too smart to fall in love.

But here comes Céline Sciamma with this ravishing work. The great triumph of Portrait of… is the film’s ability to guide us to catharsis, whether through the grandiose soundtrack or through the wild eyes of Adèle Haenel.

In an increasingly instrumentalized world like ours, it is always a balm to find nonsense like Love.