Halfway through Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Adèle Haenel turns to Noémie Merlant: “Do you think all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” Haenel’s Héloïse and Merlant’s Marianne have just become lovers: the question comes moments after their lips first met in a secluded stretch of the windswept 18th century French coast they’re stranded in. Heloise is a bride-to-be, waiting to be palmed off by her blue-blooded mother (Valeria Golino) to some affluent suitor in Milan. And Marianne is the painter hired to finish her portrait, which will be used to seal the deal. Merlant does not answer Haenel, but Sciamma lets the question carom off Héloïse’s scarcely furbished mansion, and resurface in a final heart to heart, with the young women now in bed, whispering in the dead of night. It’s the last they’ll ever share. They both know it.