
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Directed by Celine Sciamma
2019
Sciamma made a love story with almost no men in it and built the entire thing out of glances, firelight and the things two people decline to say.
★ 8.5

Sciamma made a love story with almost no men in it and built the entire thing out of glances, firelight and the things two people decline to say.

Chaplin's own favorite of his films, and the one people cry at: he refused to make it a talkie, then built ninety minutes toward a final thirty seconds.

American comedy has never been funnier, and the Legion of Decency was appalled: Wilder ran a single disguise for two hours without ever letting the joke thin out.

Proof that a studio picture thrown together in a hurry can outlive everything around it: eighty years on, the lines are still in the language and the romance still lands.