In this interview conducted for Letterboxd, I talk to the star of Céline Sciamma's searingly romantic period drama. 

French actor Noémie Merlant is the audience’s guide into the world of Céline Sciamma’s devastatingly romantic period drama, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film that presents “a new narrative of love”, as Sciamma told us in this earlier conversation.

Merlant stars as Marianne, an artist who arrives on a remote island in Brittany to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel, who also appeared in Sciamma’s 2007 film, Water Lilies). Marianne was hired by Héloïse’s countess mother, played by Valeria Golino, and the purpose of the painting is to convince a prospective husband in Rome that Héloïse is worth marrying.