this article huhu To paraphrase Sonic Youth’s co-founder Kim Gordon, in her memoir “Girl in a Band”: To be a woman is to observe others observing you. Likewise, to flirt as a queer person is to immerse one’s self in the act of looking and being looked at, sometimes in secret. For many of us, that gaze at someone or some image is how we first realized our sexuality. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” was written and directed by Céline Sciamma and captures the essence of queer women’s desire in a way many other movies have tried and failed. Such depictions can walk a fine line between representation and exploitation, and when male directors are behind the camera, the results are typically more creepy than sexy, as seen in “Blue Is the Warmest Color” and “The Handmaiden.” In those movies, the filmmakers leer at the actresses’ bodies; the joyless, naked spanking in “Blue” and the emphasis on bodily fluids in “The Handmaiden” make these scenes more like pornography than a show of intimacy and pleasure between the characters. What these men are unable to capture is this: The woman who is being looked at must look back at the woman (or camera) looking at her for any real connection to take place. And the look she gives has to be one that communicates not only pleasure in being looked at, but pleasure in what she sees. Each filmmaker takes a unique approach in countering the male gaze. A scene in “Portrait of a Lady” shows Héloïse’s bare breasts alongside her raised arm, so we also see her unshaven armpit. Body hair on a woman is true to the period, but I can’t help thinking Ms. Sciamma also wanted to emphasize the difference from the countless clips (in porn and otherwise) featuring pretty, thin and conventionally feminine white women. Perhaps she wanted to throw a monkey wrench into male fantasies about female nudity onscreen — Claire Mathon’s cinematography renders the scene painterly, beautiful and yes, sexy. But it’s not the kind of sexiness we’re used to seeing onscreen. The couples in each of these films are forced by circumstance to engage in romance covertly, yet what comes through in the performances is the pleasure of being — truly — seen.
