The Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a lovely tale of romance and fighting traditional norms and stereotypes. In this story, Marianne, a very skilled artist has been asked to paint a portrait of Heloise, who does not want her portrait to be made as she does not want to get married. Marianne has to accompany her and try to make her portrait from memory.
The entire storyline of this film revolves around the portrait. The director, Celine Sciamma, has used cinematography to make us feel like the entire movie is not made up of shots, but paintings. Every still from any scene of the movie looks as if it is a painting. The use of slow dolly shots, medium shots and slow movement of characters achieves this purpose.

One would wonder, what would the purpose of such a form of cinematography be?
The interpretation is rather simple, The film is about a painter trying to paint a portrait of a woman, but the film doesn’t just show a painter painting; it becomes a painting, a portrait of two women in love. The scenes are very nicely set up and often symmetrical; the backdrop is often like a painting. This is also the reason why the movie has fewer dialogues compared to an average movie, most of the movie is supported by sound, diegetic and non-diegetic.

I believe the cinematography in Portrait of a Lady on Fire is very unique to its narrative and has to go down as one of the best cinematographies of all time.