Subjective Utopias: Queer as Artistic Gesture in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Abstract

Juxtaposing a queer approach to art history with film studies, this paper posits a reconfiguration of the discussion on the relationship between art and non-heterosexual individuals, forsaking a notion of mere representation, towards a reflection on gendering and queering the creative act. Based on the works of scholars such as Reed (2011), Dyer (2002), and Halperin (2012), the investigation ponders how the artistic gesture can become a queer act of creation (Silva, 2021) that, more than simply spotlighting an identity, is able to re-elaborate the world, as well as art itself – both as process and work – from the perspective of non-normative subjectivities. Then, the author examines, using the methodology put forward by the Filmmakers’ Theory, how this hypothesis is actualized in the movie Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma: 2019). Through an analysis of the film and of the discourse of its director, the investigation demonstrates how the French filmmaker queers not only her main characters, but the history of art and the creative process, through the idea of a romance and an artistic work based on horizontality and an equality of regards: hers as a director; both her protagonists’; and the viewer’s. From this mise-en-regard staged in the movie, the paper surmises how art, in relation to non-heterosexual subjects, can go beyond the notion of representation and visibility, becoming a tool able to devise queer utopias based on the subjectivities and experiences of its creators.