Looking is the plot, and the looking is unbearable.
A film with no men, no score except two pieces of music, and more heat than anything I saw that year. Sciamma turns the sittings into negotiation: who is the subject, who is allowed to stare back, what a painter owes the person she loves. The bonfire scene is the best three minutes of cinema of the last decade — that a cappella swell, the hem catching. Then the ending arrives and refuses you the reunion, twice, because memory is the point. Page 28. I'm fine.