Of course, a lot of people share the opinion that Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a masterful work of cinema and I love it. I have a habit of seeking out other works a director/writer has done if I have never heard of them before and I come across one of their works. I had not heard of Sciamma before Portrait of a Lady on Fire. I have since watched all four of her director/writer films.
When it comes to a director who knows how to handle real human stories in a minimalist light that does not dampen the visual appeal, she is basically unrivalled, in my opinion. The premise to most of her films is often so day-to-day; one ordinary person desires another ordinary person or thing, and this is what they'll do to get it. And yet they always develop into moments so filled with tension that I feel my knuckles going white just because of the pauses in conversation when I am screaming for something to be said. She handles conversation and the framing of those conversational moments with such precision that it often feels like a game of conversational chess and it is riveting.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is my favourite of them, so far, because it feels like a culmination of everything she was cultivating in her previous efforts.
Tomboy is second because it had three particular sequences which made me want to curl into myself with tension.
Water Lilies follows because I really love Adele and coming-of-age stories.
Girlhood is also great, and is one of her more visually indulgent films to date.
There are so few directors where I can find myself doing four films and being floored by something in all of them. Sciamma is to dramas what people see Fincher as to thrillers.
Submitted May 24, 2020 at 04:34AM by JaguarPF https://ift.tt/3gjkKz2