You are warmly invited to attend our next film evening on\u00a0Friday<\/b>\u00a021 June:\u00a0Portrait of a Lady on Fire<\/i>\u00a0(run time: 2h 11m).This is a French film from 2019, set in late 18th\u00a0century France. A painter is commissioned to paint the pre-wedding portrait of an aristocrat\u2019s daughter. The action takes place on a distant island in Brittany where the painter, Marianne, accompanies her subject on long coastline walks, in order to memorize her features; the subject, H\u00e9loise, has forbidden her portrait to be painted because she does not want to be married off to a Milanese aristocrat, as arranged by her mother.<\/p>\n
In the course of their time together, an erotic attachment grows between the women, accelerated by their arranging an abortion for a pregnant housemaid and consummated during a period when H\u00e9loise\u2019s mother is absent. The film raises questions of erotic ties between women and the effect of the patriarchy on people\u2019s lives (while there are few male characters in the film, the patriarchy is omnipresent). Rachel Syme of the New Yorker says the film thoroughly examines the entanglements between artistic creation and burgeoning love, between memory and ambition and freedom. As much as it is about the electric connection between women as they find their desire for creative experience fulfilled in each other, it is also about the powers of art to validate, preserve, and console after a romance is over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You are warmly invited to attend our next film evening on\u00a0Friday\u00a021 June:\u00a0Portrait of a Lady on Fire\u00a0(run time: 2h 11m).This is a French film from 2019, set in late 18th\u00a0century France. A painter is commissioned to paint the pre-wedding portrait of an aristocrat\u2019s daughter. The action takes place on a distant island in Brittany where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":109345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"mec_category":[878,542],"mec_speaker":[2680,2725,760],"class_list":["post-109344","mec-events","type-mec-events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","mec_category-film-discussion","mec_category-webinar"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n