Seldom does a film become a painting, not simply for its impeccable framing of a scene or the composition of its lighting and colours, but really truly understanding a medium outside of itself and existing purely in service of embodying what it is to take time in each stroke, to trap emotion and the totality of a person in an image frozen in time and to yet be utterly alive.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE does this, setting out and utterly succeeding to capture within itself that which is beautiful and mythic and eternal, human and bittersweet and fleeting in the gaze of the artist.

A haunting transient moment of a story within a story and a wonderful film.