Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a film about the act of looking. Its central relationship, between painter Marianne and her subject Heloise, is built from sustained, reciprocal attention. Neither looks away. The film asks you, likewise, to look without looking away, and what you see is one of the most complete love stories in the history of cinema.

Marianne (Noemie Merlant) is commissioned to paint a portrait of Heloise (Adele Haenel) without Heloise’s knowledge: she is to be painted in secret, against her wishes, for an arranged marriage she does not want. As Marianne observes Heloise, as Heloise observes Marianne watching her, the relationship becomes something else entirely.

Celine Sciamma’s direction is extraordinary in its restraint. She builds intimacy through proximity, through sustained takes, through the specific quality of attention the camera pays to both faces. The film is set in late 18th-century Brittany, in a world entirely of women.

The final sequence, involving a piece of music recognized across a crowded theater, is one of the most devastating endings in recent cinema. This is a great film.