A student in her class asks Marianne (Noémie Merlant) a question. She wants to know about one of her works, Portrait de la Jeune fille en feu. This takes her back to the past when she was hired to paint the portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who had been taken out of a convent to marry a Milanese nobleman after her sister’s suicide. The rich girl does not know that she is being painted, so Marianne acts as the hired help as she memorizes her features and creates the piece in secret.

As she finishes the painting, Marianne feels terrible that she lied, so she shares it with Héloïse, who thinks it doesn’t capture her. After destroying the painting, the artist is about to be let go when Héloïse says she will sit for a new portrait. After just five days, she begins a new picture, but this time is filled with them falling in love as the girl’s mother (Valeria Golino) leaves the house. They debate the meaning of Orpheus and Eurydice; they dance around a fire, help a servant get an abortion and make love. Then, after the portrait has been approved, Marianne must leave.

In her life, Marianne would only see her two more times, both in secret, as she saw a painting of Héloïse with a child but holding a book that had page 28 being revealed. This is the page where the artist drew a nude sketch of her. Then, many years later, she spies her crying and smiling as an orchestra plays Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, music that she had introduced the noblewoman to so many decades before.

Voted the 30th greatest film of all time in the Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time 2022, the highest of films released in the 2010s, this movie may not remind many of Jean Rollin, but its languid pace and the running down the beach reminded me of the times I have spent watching his syrup soft, slow-moving vampires emerge from grandfather clocks on French sands. Director and writer Céline Sciamma created a meditation on love, which made me sadder when I learned that she and Adèle Haenel had broken up before filming.