Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Films that shaped it
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Her films are still having an impact on my generation… Agnès Varda, not only for her movies, but for the way she was in the world, the way she was an artist, the way she was a woman in cinema. Cléo from 5 to 7 is an example of that, and it gives you a lot of freedom for your own work.
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Filmmakers like Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (especially 'All That Heaven Allows' and 'Fear Eats the Soul') are very important to me because they manage to turn melodrama into social commentary. That's a huge lesson. I am interested in how melodrama can be political.
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It was an obsession of mine to really portray the act of painting. What does it mean to create? What does it mean to gaze? I was very much inspired by *La Belle Noiseuse* by Jacques Rivette, for example, which is a film about a painter and his model. It’s also about the process of creation. It was very important for me, the idea of having a film about a painter and a model, and dealing with the process of the gaze, and going against the male gaze that’s usually in these types of films.
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I was interested in portraying an artist. The gaze is an artistic gaze. We're thinking about the art history. So you have a lot of movies about artists, but usually it’s a male painter. When you think about La Belle Noiseuse by Rivette, it’s a great movie, and it’s a man painting a woman. We really wanted to think about a different perspective, a woman painting a woman.
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One of the things that I was always thinking about watching Kiarostami films, and especially films like Taste of Cherry or Ten, is how he builds a relationship with the audience. You are involved in the process of watching, in the process of building the film with him.
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I really love Wong Kar-wai, of course. I’m thinking of In the Mood for Love and its sense of touch, the way bodies are filmed. That’s very inspiring.
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Also, I would say Pedro Almodóvar, with Volver as well. I think the idea of having actresses who are not going to be, let’s say, in the regular beauty standards but are very sensual, and very beautiful, very powerful, that’s something that inspired me.
