A painter is hired to complete a wedding portrait, but she cannot tell her subject she is being painted. So she watches in secret, memorizing a face that does not know it is being studied, and falls in love with what she sees.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019) is set on an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century. Marianne, played by Noémie Merlant, arrives to paint Héloïse, played by Adèle Haenel, a young woman recently pulled from a convent for an arranged marriage. Héloïse has refused every painter sent before. Marianne must pose as a walking companion, observe her by day, and paint her by candlelight at night.

Céline Sciamma wrote and directed the film, and crafted it around looking itself, who is allowed to look, who is looked at, and what changes when the looker is looked back at. There are almost no men in the film and no score beyond what the characters themselves produce.

The romance between the two women unfolds through glances, unfinished sketches, and stolen hours before the wedding arrives, perhaps to end them. Valeria Golino plays the countess who commissions the portrait and controls both women's fates.

The film premiered at Cannes, where Sciamma won the award for Best Screenplay.