11/8/2023 0 Comments Portrait of a lady on fire bookBut hearing the music - specifically, this music - cannot help but call to mind the memory of what she lost in order to gain it namely, Marianne. In one sense, Héloïse has something that she wanted she's happy. Now she finally gets to experience it - with the implication, like the painting, that she is now a married woman, whether it's to the Italian or someone else - but that brings its own complex set of emotions. It was perhaps even something worth being married for. Hearing an orchestra was something that Héloïse longed to hear. This isn't just Héloïse's own way of telling Marianne that she remembers her too, but it's recalling a very specific vision: like how Héloïse gives Marianne one last perfect memory by using the informal French and allowing to see her in white, just as Marianne had visions of, Héloïse including the number 28 here is telling Marianne of the perfect moment between them she is choosing to hold in her own memory, and showing that no matter the artist, Marianne is the one who truly sees her. Héloïse's painting calls out to Marianne because of this, their shared bond physically broken but immortalized on the canvas as it is in their memories and hearts. Though both could be enough to make Marianne's heart either swell or burst, what matters most is the page number peeking out of the book in her lap: number 28, the same page that Marianne drew herself on in Héloïse's copy of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. When Marianne does make her way through the crowd to face the portrait of Héloïse in Portrait of a Lady on Fire's ending, what stands out isn't the way Héloïse is painted, nor the golden-haired child - almost certainly her daughter - by her side. By turning the story into that of the female gaze, whichever point of view you see it from, then Sciamma gives both women control in the tale and over their destinies. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is typically seen as one of the male gaze it is he who looks upon her, his choice to view her and his choice to put his gaze above her actual existence. Again, this posits Héloïse as Eurydice, but one with full control over her actions, wanting Marianne to see her again yet still just out of reach. This then leads into Marianne's second act of turning around to face Héloïse, as she makes her way through the crowd to see her new portrait, almost as if called by an unheard voice. It's suggested that Orpheus made the "poet's choice" in choosing to turn around here, Marianne does something similar, making the artist's choice. Marianne casts herself as Orpheus in the painting she unveils back in the present day at the end of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (under her father's name), which captures the very moment of Orpheus looking at Eurydice, reflecting her own memory of that last glimpse she took of Héloïse as she left the house. This myth then comes to frame Marianne and Héloïse's own love story: one that both know cannot last, and so is better to end with the memory than nothing at all. While the common interpretation of this is that Orpheus chooses to look back, Héloïse offers her own: that Eurydice called to him to turn around, and only because of that did he decide to do so.
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