Portrait of a Lady on Fire

“Don't regret. Remember.”

Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a painter, is rowed out to a remote island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). The commission has already failed once, because the young woman will not sit for it. Céline Sciamma sets the clock in the portrait itself, which Marianne must finish before the marriage takes Héloïse away.