Brittany, 1770. A young painter named Marianne arrives at an isolated house on the coast. She has been hired to paint a portrait of Héloïse, a young woman about to be married to a man in Milan she has never met. The portrait will be sent to him. But Héloïse refuses to pose. So Marianne is introduced as a companion for her walks, and must study her face in secret, on long walks by the sea, then paint her from memory.
That's the premise of Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), which won the award for best screenplay at Cannes. It's a love story. It's also one of the most beautiful films ever made about what it means to really look at someone.
Looking goes both ways
At first, Marianne looks at Héloïse the way a painter studies a subject: the shape of an ear, the position of the hands, the color of the skin. But looking closely is never one-sided. Héloïse, it turns out, has been watching Marianne too. Every glance is returned. The film quietly asks: when you look at someone, do you also let yourself be seen?
The myth at the heart of the film
One evening, the women read aloud the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus goes down to the underworld to bring back his wife, on one condition: he must not look back at her until they reach the light. He turns around, and loses her forever. Why did he look? The women debate it. Perhaps it was a choice: not the wife, but the memory of her.
The myth becomes the film's key. Some looks are a way of holding on. Some are a way of saying goodbye, and keeping someone forever.
A practice: one minute of true looking
The next time you're with someone you love, a partner, a child, a parent, a friend, look at them for one full minute while they're absorbed in something else. Notice the details you've stopped seeing: a line near the eye, a habit of the hands, the way the light falls on their hair. You'll feel tenderness rise. That's what attention does. Most of the time, we look at the people we love without really seeing them.
Two worlds of attention
The Both Worlds subscription brings together everything I make for slow looking: the monthly letter and postcard in your mailbox, the seasonal print issue of "(meditating) On Art", and all the Digital subscription's recommendations, videos and practices, from films and books to places worth seeing. Paper for the heart, the screen for discovery.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi