Author: csh
This article was first published in "Gyro Movie"
Even a masterpiece like "The Bar at the Goddess Recreation Hall" cannot be a "portrait of a burning woman". In this oil on canvas by Edward Manet, a waitress stares straight ahead blankly. From the huge mirror behind her, you can see the crowd full of guests. But we will immediately find in the mirror that a man is talking to her, and the lady in the painting is looking at both the man and the viewer in front of the painting. This painting presupposes reality in an astonishing way, but the presupposition of reality cannot be equated to intervention in reality after all. A silent oil painting can never ignite the flames of the space outside the painting.
In "Portrait of a Burning Woman", it can be not only a woman, but also a portrait. Indeed, when Elois (Adela Hanel) stares at the painter Marion (Nomi Melante), she is a burning woman. This image is the same as the flame. The preset heat made her stagnate into an isolated painting; but more importantly, when Marion accidentally lit Eloize's portrait, the flame of intervention in reality turned this portrait into a movie.
Regardless of whether the Chinese title of "Portrait of a Burning Woman" is wrongly translated, the ambiguity it embodies is precisely the kind of mirrored gaze that the film wants to show, and the subtle distinction between the two art forms-this In this way, this work combines gender issues with the discussion of the film itself.
Perhaps we can start from the gender issue. After all, the plot of this film tempts everyone to interpret it feministly: an island, two women, a rich lady who is about to get married, and a painter for her marriage. The female painter, the gradual love between the two... Whether it is its content, theme or form, it tells us with certainty that it is a female film, even a feminist film. All its main characters are women, and it presents women's plight (whether through island space or marriage contract) and repressed erotic desires.
In the feminist film "The Avengers", each work has its own unique weapon against masculine images. The gaze of women and the Oedipus narrative in mainstream movies have become the targets of these movies. Both the rambling narrative in "Jeanne Dillman" (1975) or the repetitive narrative in "The Moments" (2002) are all aimed at depicting the true, daily, and reincarnation life of women. Experience.
The weapon of "Portrait of a Burning Woman" is a structure of gazing at each other. In traditional androcentric images, composition, lighting, and scheduling will all portray women into the male protagonist's desire objects, allowing them to accept the gaze of the male protagonist (and the audience who agrees with him). But in this film, the subject and object of desire become women, and the positions of the two are fluid with each other.
Perhaps at first glance, many viewers will see Marion as a stare. Of course, as a painter who paints for Eloise, she will undoubtedly have a lot of perspective shots. But it is worth mentioning that in the first scene of the film, Marion has already existed as the stared. She sits in an oil painting composition, accepting the gaze of the students, who are drawing portraits of her. Although when Marianne and Eloize first met, we mainly stared at Eloize through Marianne’s point of view lens, but as the film progressed, Marianne also gradually fell into the gaze. Among. The gaze flowing between the two not only guided the warm lust, but also shattered the barriers of traditional images.
However, there are too many films showing women's dilemma, lust suppression, and even staring at each other. They have even become a certain kind of feminist film scheme (schemas). "Adele's Life" (2013) is based on close-up and close-up styles, presenting a highly depressive texture; Ou Rong's "New Girlfriend" (2014) also uses quite stunning images to show a Family structure staring at each other. As a masterpiece of 2019, the outstanding feature of "Portrait of a Burning Woman" is that it does not stop at the above-mentioned feminist schema. It explored the boundaries of the two art forms of film and painting, created a highly reflexive image, and used this image to bring the above-mentioned images to life.
André Bazin pointed out in his famous "Painting and Film" that painting creates a space that is isolated from the outside world and only open to the inside, while the scene on the screen can extend to the outside world indefinitely—— "The frame is centripetal, and the screen is centrifugal." In this film, the burning woman exists in the centripetal space, and the burning portrait exists in the centripetal field. The fate of the whole story seems to be to imprison Eloise in the painting prepared for marriage. With her clothes on fire, she faced the female barrier like a picture frame, and Mary Ann, who accidentally lit the portrait, was the messenger who came to break the barrier.
She in the painting became a prisoner, waiting for her in the image to save herself. When Eloise sat in the chair, she became a painting. But we immediately noticed that her gaze gradually shifted away from the painting, and this picture was transformed into a flowing image, and the process of Mary Ann entering the painting was the process by which she broke the barriers.
The most moving scene may happen at the end of the film. Amid Vivaldi's music, Eloise was once again in Marian's gaze. This echoed the beginning of the film, when the students stared at Marion, but actually stared at the burning portrait of Elois. But the difference is that this is not a painting, but an "image" that Marianne wants. But as the lens progressed, we gradually realized that in fact, Eloyz was also a stare. When she recalled the woman she loved so much in the music, her unforgettable gaze on the past "outside the painting" made herself the person who broke the barrier.
Women are always imprisoned in the metaphor of water-water and the ocean signify the tenderness of the uterus, the mother's body and women, and even in some contexts, women will be directly described as water. When Mariam crossed the sea island, the sea water accidentally soaked the drawing paper; Eloize, trapped on the isolated island, seemed to always receive the call of the sea inexplicably.
They waited for the flame. The waitress in the goddess amusement hall was also begging for someone to burn the mirror image behind her and burn the man's eyes. But her hopeless look in her eyes shows that she knows that when the flame exists in the painting, it will be nothing more than a static pattern. But the kind of real flame she desires can exist in the movie, and it can even burn the entire invalid portrait. When Marianne looked at the "Portrait of a Burning Woman", she knew well that the love affair between herself and Eloize was something that existed outside the painting and exuded the heat of a bonfire.
And when she broke the oil painting-like composition and walked to Eloize's side, her red dress was the color of flame.
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