Corporeality and Imageness, Intermediality and Intersensuality in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34629/rcdmt.vol.2.n.1.pp91-105

Keywords:

Intermediality, Intersensuality, The female gaze, Corporeality, Imageness

Abstract

Céline Sciamma’s 2019 romantic drama film places in focus painterly representation accompanied by the female gaze. It addresses femininity not only by employing almost exclusively female characters, but eminently by delving into the power of the female gaze. Departing from the possibilities of intersectional analysis (Wilson 2021), this article proposes to think further on the ways in which the female gaze is related to intermediality and intersensuality, inviting the senses and the other arts to a symbiotic dialogue. In the connection between painting and film, the collaboration of the painter Hélène Delmaire is also investigated. Sciamma’s work dramatizes the process of becoming an image, implying objectification, and the role of the female perception and attachment in resisting to it.  The process of painting becomes a mediator in processing emotions, giving voice to the unspeakable in an overflow of sensations and intermedial transformations.

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Author Biography

  • Judit Pieldner, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania

    Judit Pieldner, PhD, is a Habilitated Associate Professor at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Her research interests are related to intermediality, remediation, experimental cinema and screen adaptation. She has contributed to several scholarly publications, among them the journal Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies and the volume Caught In-Between. Intermediality in Contemporary Eastern European and Russian Cinema (ed. Ágnes Pethő, Edinburgh UP, 2020). Her latest monograph, Adaptation, Remediation and Intermediality: Forms of In-Betweenness in Cinema, was published by Cluj University Press (2020). She has been a member of three exploratory group research projects led by Ágnes Pethő.

References

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Published

2025-06-23

How to Cite

Corporeality and Imageness, Intermediality and Intersensuality in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. (2025). RHINOCERVS: Cinema, Dança, Música, Teatro, 2(1), 91-105. https://doi.org/10.34629/rcdmt.vol.2.n.1.pp91-105