Something to watch tonight: Thursday 26 June

50 Greatest Films #30: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciamma, 2019)

The New York Times has just launched a week-long cel­eb­ra­tion of films from the 21^st cen­tury, includ­ing a top 100 com­piled from votes gathered from vari­ous luminar­ies. Setting aside the fact that the year 2000 is not in the 21^st cen­tury and that the accur­acy of lists such as as these are ques­tion­able from every angle, I’m glad these lists get made because they provide a way to nav­ig­ate through all that art/content when decision para­lys­is is such a prob­lem. Also because they do what this news­let­ter hopes to do – make recom­mend­a­tions with some added illu­min­at­ing context.

I see vari­ous chums and con­nec­tions of mine have taken the oppor­tun­ity to post their own bal­lot but I will demur. My brain just doesn’t work like that – I can barely remem­ber what I watched yes­ter­day and if it wasn’t for Letterboxd, the ori­gin­al Funerals & Snake archive and this news­let­ter, I wouldn’t know where to start.

That’s why I have the long-term pro­ject of watch­ing (or rewatch­ing where neces­sary) the top 50 films in the Sight & Sound sur­vey from 2022. Today we reach num­ber 30 – Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the first film from this cen­tury to be included and the only film in the top 50 list that was released since the pre­vi­ous survey.

I was lucky enough to review Portrait of a Lady on Fire for RNZ At the Movies when it came out and recom­men­ded it here back in September 2023:

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a film about lim­its. The lim­its placed on women because of gender, the lim­its put on les­bi­an women because of pre­ju­dice and the lim­its put on a squeezed aris­to­cracy when the money dis­ap­pears at the same time as the men do. The title of the film comes from an incid­ent in the story but it’s also a little bit of a mis­nomer. Portrait of a Lady on Firesmoulders through­out, there is con­sid­er­able heat under the sur­face but for all the char­ac­ters there is no easy way to let it out.

Superbly craf­ted from begin­ning to end, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is going to be lots of people’s favour­ite film of the year. It’s romantic, polit­ic­al, sens­it­ive and sens­ory. If your idea of great cinema is to watch the play of emo­tions make their way across the face of a char­ac­ter try­ing to sup­press them, this film is going to be right up your alley.

I’ve removed the pay­wall from that post so you can read more of the sum­mary and fol­low the links.

Editor’s Note

The Doc Edge fest­iv­al has just opened in Auckland and in pre­vi­ous years I wrote a pre­view of some of the fea­tured titles. RNZ isn’t much inter­ested in that sort of thing any longer and, without the small amount of coin­age they provided, I can’t jus­ti­fy spend­ing the time on it. If you would like to see these pre­views return you can either con­tact RNZ and lobby them for more or buy a sub­scrip­tion here. I would be very grate­ful either way.

For an altern­at­ive view­point on Doc Edge and its pos­i­tion in New Zealand’s cinema firm­a­ment, here’s friend of the news­let­ter, Johnny Crawford: The last bas­tion of lib­er­al Zionism in Aotearoa.

Where to watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision and others

Australia: Digital rental

Canada: Digital rental

Ireland: Digital rental

India: Streaming on Prime Video or Mubi

USA: Streaming on Max

UK: Streaming on ITVx (free with ads) or Curzon