{"id":1207,"date":"2021-01-07T21:26:40","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T21:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/?p=1207"},"modified":"2021-07-01T14:43:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T14:43:45","slug":"celine-sciammas-portrait-of-eurydice-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/2021\/01\/07\/celine-sciammas-portrait-of-eurydice-on-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"C\u00e9line Sciamma’s Portrait of Eurydice on Fire, by Amelia Ferry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2014\u2014\u2014 post by Amelia Ferry*<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Portrait of a Lady on Fire <\/em>(Portrait de la jeune fille en feu<\/em>; dir. C. Sciamma, 2019) adapts the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Set on an island in 18th<\/sup>-century Bretagne, Sciamma\u2019s screenplay paints the tale of Orpheus\u2019 attempts to recover the beloved Eurydice from the dead, though in this innovative adaptation both the artist and the beloved are women. The characters of Marianne and H\u00e9lo\u00efse represent the famous musician and the dead lover in this \u201cqueer feminist love story\u201d that showcases the loss of love as a modern tragedy (Kaminsky, 2019). Marianne\u2019s status as a representation of Orpheus is built by her love for H\u00e9lo\u00efse and her love for art which allows Marianne to express her love for H\u00e9lo\u00efse. At the end of the film, \u201cMarianne goes on to paint, tellingly, an\u2018Orpheus and Eurydice\u2019 [an acknowledgement al\u00e0 Hutcheon\u2019s Theory of Adaptation<\/em>] as well as the titular \u2018Portrait\u2019 just as Orpheus had continued on to sing \u2018tales of \u2018forbidden love\u2019 after he had looked back at Eurydice and lost her to the Underworld\u201d (Stevens, 2020), cf. Ov. Met<\/em>. 10. H\u00e9lo\u00efse\u2019s representation of Eurydice equates to a \u201chell\u201d created by a man\u2019s world compelling her to marry Mr. Delamarche, a man she cannot love. The film showcases a dark and compelling atmosphere amidst a beautiful scenery. The haunting ruins and water from the island emphasize the presence of the underworld to this gripping story.<\/p>\n

This film is built by its courage and ability to embrace the hard truths of the world. Through the acknowledgement of the Orpheus myth, when H\u00e9lo\u00efse overtly reads a French translation of Ovid Metamorphoses <\/em>10.16-63 and characters react to it tellingly (1:11:10-1:14:30), Sciamma prepares the audience for an unhappy ending. The anticipation of the heartache adds a somber and bittersweet atmosphere to the rest of the film, where the audience and the characters are constantly waiting for the end, for the two women to lose each other. That is what makes the film so beautiful, that it does not shy away from the pain but completely and utterly embraces it. Sciamma\u2019s myth accentuates the story of two women being forced by an unforgiving society to give up their love for each other. This artistic film thinks through the myth of Orpheus and delivers a social commentary on how the stories of women and LGBTQ individuals so often end in tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014 Amelia Ferry, a student at Brigham Young University, spun this piece from a paper she wrote for ClCv 261 F2020 “Greek and Roman Civilization and Literature in Film”
\nOGCMA = OrpheusEurydice2.0100_Sciamma<\/p>\n

Citations<\/span><\/p>\n

Portrait de la juene fille en feu (Portrait of a Lady on Fire). <\/em>Dir. Celine Sciamma. Pyramide Films, 2019.<\/p>\n

Kaminsky, Lauren. \u201cBurning Gaze\u201d. Film Comment <\/em>55.6 (2019): 42-45. Web.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Falt, Chris. 2020. \u201c\u2019Portrait of a Lady on Fire\u2019 Cinematography: the perfect 18th<\/sup> century digital painting.\u201d IndieWire<\/em> 28 Feb 2020 https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/2020\/02\/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-cinematography-claire-mathon-celine-sciamma-1202214143\/<\/a> . Accessed 7 Jan 2021.<\/p>\n

Stevens, Benjamin O. 2020 \u201cNot the Lover\u2019s Choice but the Poet\u2019s: Classical Receptions in Portrait of a Lady on Fire\u201d. Frontieres<\/em>. https:\/\/publications-prairial.fr\/frontiere-s\/index.php?id=258<\/a> . Accessed 4 Jan 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2014\u2014\u2014 post by Amelia Ferry* \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu; dir. C. Sciamma, 2019) adapts the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Set on an island in 18th-century Bretagne, Sciamma\u2019s screenplay paints the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[117,124],"tags":[118,120,119],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythology","category-student-contributors","tag-c-sciamma","tag-heuseurydice-eurydice","tag-or"],"modified_by":"Roger Macfarlane","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogcmaonline.byu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}