One thing I liked in PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE is how Sciamma played with blocking/foreshadowing. Mid-film Marianne sees Héloïse in a vision reminiscent of the Eurycide myth they were discussing earlier on. The subsequent tracking shot beautifully frames the stakes of the story:

the tension exists between the artist's ethereal memory of Héloïse, and the tangible lover's reality. The opening of the film also suggests that Marianne is torn between them because she is a painter being painted (hence presenting herself as the object of artistic desire, as

the lover), but her "portrait of a lady on fire" is an imagined rendition that mixes various memories, recalling her other status, that of the artist who projects her desire.

From the ritual scene, she keeps the fire, and places it in another environment, probably inspired by the open space of the beach she and Héloïse are on when the latter goes bathing. But the light is neither day nor night, placing the scene in a liminal, in-between space which is

where both women are during most of their relationship: in between two periods of social conformity, in between their desire for each other and the unavoidable restrictive normality. The whole film plays on Marianne and Héloïse trading places as the artist and the lover.

I don't think this liminal space is limited to the painting, as Sciamma sometimes separates the characters with symbolic objects within the frame: the 1st time Marianne wants to kiss Héloïse, they are visually separated by the Eurycide book and fire. One image summing it all up.

The blocking is particularly playful in the beginning of the film, when Marianne tries to memorize Héloïse's facial features, and their faces seem to merge, to exist within a single space, announcing their somewhat interchangeable position in the coming thematic paradigm.

The film eventually attributes one position to each of them, with Marianne settling as Orpheus the poet and Héloïse as Eurycide the bride. I thought this brief moment worked very well specifically because it had been foreshadowed.

"Retourne-toi !"